DiRAC invited researchers to submit aesthetically inspiring and scientifically interesting imagery generated using the DiRAC facility during the previous three years. With two categories: particle and nuclear physics images; and astronomy, cosmology and solar & planetary science images, the full range of submitted images and the theme winners can be found below.
The 2023 Research Image Competition was sponsored by Logicalis, who awarded each category winner a £250 prize.
The most massive galaxy cluster in the flagship, 2.8 Gpc, FLAMINGO volume, with each side of the image spanning 40 megaparsecs. Each colour represents a different gas density contour, highlighting the extremely complex spatial and velocity structure of the gas within the cluster. At the center, the gas serendipitously aligns to produce a love heart.
The image was created with DiRAC supported software SWIFT and swiftsimio.
Molecular dynamics simulations of high-dose radiation damage in tungsten to understand the evolution of the material under fusion reactor conditions. Blue spheres are vacancies (missing-atom defects), orange spheres are interstitials (extra-atom defects). Lines are dislocations (linear crystallographic defect).
16 million atoms were simulated on CSD3; the crystal began free of lattice defects. As irradiation progressed, the three kinds of defects mentioned above were formed and started coalescing under mutual elastic interactions. This gave rise to a change in volume and shape of the crystal; characterising and understanding these variations in volume and shape brought about by irradiation was the main purpose of this work. Softwares: LAMMPS for simulations, Ovito for the rendering.
