Three-dimensional Reconstruction of Coronal Plasma Properties from a Single Perspective

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to reconstruct the three-dimensional properties of coronal plasma from a single perspective by leveraging the organized structure along magnetic field lines, overcoming previous line-of-sight degeneracy issues.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that uses magnetic field structures to resolve line-of-sight degeneracy in optically thin coronal plasma observations from a single viewpoint.

Findings

Preliminary results with potential field resemble real solar data.

Residuals contain information to refine magnetic field models.

Method enables direct use of plasma observations for magnetic field extrapolation.

Abstract

Much of our understanding of the state of coronal plasmas comes from observations that are optically thin. This means that light travels freely through the corona without being materially affected by it, which allows it to be easily seen through, but also results in a line-of-sight degeneracy which has previously thwarted attempts to recover the three-dimensional structure of the coronal plasma. However, although the corona is disorganized in the line-of-sight direction, it is highly organized in the field-aligned direction. This paper demonstrates how to exploit this organization to resolve the line-of-sight degeneracy in the plasma properties using a suitable magnetic field structure. A preliminary investigation with a potential field is shown, finding a solution which clearly resembles the real solar data, even with a single perspective. The results indicate that there is ample information in the resulting residuals that can be used to refine the magnetic field structure, allowing, for the first time, the optically thin plasma observations to speak directly to the magnetic field extrapolations.