Relative coronal abundance diagnostics with Solar Orbiter/SPICE

Abstract:

Linking solar activity on the surface and in the corona to the inner heliosphere is one of Solar Orbiter’s main goals. Its UV spectrometer SPICE (SPectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment) will provide relative abundance measurements which will be key in this quest as different structures on the Sun have different abundances as a consequence of the FIP (First Ionization Potential) effect. Solar Orbiter’s unique combination of remote sensing and in-situ instruments coupled with observation from other missions such as Parker Solar Probe will allow us to compare in-situ and remote sensing composition data. With the addition of modeling, these new results will allow us to trace back the source of heliospheric plasma. As high telemetry will not always be available with SPICE, we have developed a method for measuring relative abundances that is both telemetry efficient and reliable. Unlike methods based on Differential Emission Measure (DEM) inversion, the Linear Combination Ratio (LCR) method does not require a large number of spectral lines. This new method is based on linear combinations of UV spectral lines. The coefficients of the combinations are optimized such that the ratio of two linear combinations of radiances would yield the relative abundance of two elements. We present some abundance diagnostics tested on different combinations of spectral lines observable by SPICE.