This is a set of illustrations that were commissioned by the University of Michigan College of Literature Science and the Arts alumni magazine, to illustrate an article about recent research by Minh Nguyen, Dragan Huterer (my PhD advisor), and Yuewei Wen. The preprint of Minh, Dragan, and Yuewei’s research paper is on arXiv here (2302.0133), and was published in Physical Review Letters (link).

The LSA magazine article featuring these illustrations, written by Jordyn Imhoff, can be found here. These images can be use in slides for talks as long as LSA Magzine is credited.

This is the header illustration for the article, illustrating the idea that matter density fluctuations have grown over time, and that those density fluctuations are sensitive to cosmological physics related to gravity and the expansion of the Universe. alt="Illustration in a style mimicking a paper collage showing, the evolution of density fluctuations growing over the history of the Universe. An inset shows galaxies in an overdensity, with an arrow labeled gravity pointing inwards, and an arrow labeled expansion pointing out. In the lower half of the image, pie charts show the relative abundance of dark matter and dark energy, as well as the increasing amplitude of density fluctuations at different epochs."

Here’s an inset that schematically illustrates the main finding of the paper: measurements of how density fluctuations grow over time is compared to predictions from the standard cosmological model, as well as a model with an additional parameter modifying the rate of large-scale structure growth. The modified-growth model fit is slightly better than, and predicts smaller density fluctuatiosn than the standard model. alt="Cartoon version of a plot showing growth of density fluctuations versus time. A line corresponding labeled 'standard model' is higher than a line labeled 'Model with modified growth.'"

Here’s a cropped version of the main image: alt="Same illustration as above but with some empty space at the left and right cropped off."

And here’s an even more cropped version that was shown for mobile browser views of the article: alt="A crop of the same illustration as above, showing just the inset with galaxies in an overdensity, with an arrow labeled gravity pointing inwards, and an arrow labeled expansion pointing ou"