The off-limb polarized corona at high-resolution: new synthetic views for the DKIST era

Abstract:

In anticipation of the great advances that the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope will soon provide for spectropolarimetry of the off limb solar corona, we investigate the formation of the prime coronal lines targeted by DKIST as synthesized through advanced, high-resolution, finely-structured, 3D MURaM coronal simulations. In doing so, we demonstrate a new code developed for polarized line emission calculations referred to as pyCLE. We provide detailed benchmarks of pyCLE, in specific against tools provided by the Chianti team (in the scalar limit), both to validate the code and provide a primer for the line-dependent aspects of the polarization formation. Synthetic maps created using pyCLE and the MURaM active region simulation allow us to describe and predict polarized features within the array of multi-wavelength observables available. In addition, we comment on the opportunities provided for, as well as the challenges faced by, the analysis of the apparent polarized fine structure.