This is a scientific diagram for a theoretical physics fellowship illustrating the flow of Dark Matter particles within different models.
The arrows show the fluid’s velocity at different points and times. The first panel corresponds to a classical fluid description, where the velocity “crunches into itself”; the second panel is a description in terms of particles that can scatter off each other; the third panel is a modified model which retains a field description.
For this technical figure, the researcher provided me with a sketch and a clear explaination of this idea. Thanks to this, the process of cleaning up the figure and making it more readable was very smooth.
The main edits I made were introducing a grid, increasing the number of arrows representing the velocity and making them as regular as possible. The different balls’ colors in the middle panel also shows how scattered particles get mixed.