An elemental abundance diagnostic for coordinated Solar Orbiter/SPICE and Hinode/EIS observations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a spectroscopic diagnostic ratio using Solar Orbiter/SPICE and Hinode/EIS data to accurately measure the FIP bias in the solar atmosphere, demonstrating its robustness and potential for future solar missions.

Contribution

It presents a new density and temperature insensitive diagnostic ratio for FIP bias, validated through empirical experiments and applied to coordinated spacecraft observations.

Findings

The diagnostic ratio is insensitive to temperature and density variations.

It can recover FIP bias within 10-14% accuracy.

Application to real data shows consistent FIP bias variations with in-situ measurements.

Abstract

Plasma composition measurements are a vital tool for the success of current and future solar missions, but density and temperature insensitive spectroscopic diagnostic ratios are sparse, and their underlying accuracy in determining the magnitude of the First Ionization Potential (FIP) effect in the solar atmosphere remains an open question. Here we assess the Fe VIII 185.213A/Ne VIII 770.428A intensity ratio that can be observed as a multi-spacecraft combination between Solar Orbiter/SPICE and Hinode/EIS. We find that it is fairly insensitive to temperature and density in the range of log (T/K) = 5.65-6.05 and is therefore useful, in principle, for analyzing on-orbit EUV spectra. We also perform an empirical experiment, using Hinode/EIS measurements of coronal fan loop temperature distributions weighted by randomnly generated FIP bias values, to show that our diagnostic method can provide accurate results as it recovers the input FIP bias to within 10--14%. This is encouraging since it is smaller than the magnitude of variations seen throughout the solar corona. We apply the diagnostic to coordinated observations from 2023 March, and show that the combination of SPICE and EIS allows measurements of the Fe/Ne FIP bias in the regions where the footpoints of the magnetic field connected to Solar Orbiter are predicted to be located. The results show an increase in FIP bias between the main leading polarity and the trailing decayed polarity that broadly agrees with Fe/O in-situ measurements from Solar Orbiter/SWA. Multi-spacecraft coordinated observations are complex, but this diagnostic also falls within the planned wavebands for Solar-C/EUVST.