Measuring local physical parameters in coronal loops with spatial seismology

Context: The method of spatial seismology can be applied to the amplitude profile of transverse coronal loop oscillations to constrain the distributions of physical parameters, such as the loop density, magnitude of the magnetic field, and so on.

Aims: We intend to develop and apply a practical spatial seismology technique to detect physical parameters of plasma and validate its effectiveness by comparing it with other methods.

Methods: A spatial seismology inversion was conducted by numerically optimizing a parametric dynamic model of the loop’s density stratification and magnetic field variation to best fit the measured amplitude profile of the loop.

Results: The spatial seismology inversion technique developed here was applied to a transverse coronal loop oscillation that occurred on 2013 April 11, whose oscillation amplitude profile of both the fundamental mode and first overtone was reported in previous work. The consistency between the time domain analysis and spatial seismology has been verified. Meanwhile, we accounted for the asymmetric profile of the fundamental mode by forward modeling and we derived the magnetic field distribution by inverse modeling, which is coincident with that of the extrapolated one. In addition, spatial seismology inversion was applied to the transverse oscillation event on 2022 March 30 to obtain the distribution of the loop’s density and magnetic field, which are compared with the results derived from the differential emission measure (DEM) diagnostics and the direct potential field extrapolation.

Conclusions: Spatial seismology inversion can be used as an effective method to independently measure various physical parameters, for example the density and magnetic field of coronal loops, which are consistent with the results obtained by DEM diagnostics and potential field extrapolation.