Fast Differential Emission Measure Inversion of Solar Coronal Data

Abstract

We present a fast method for reconstructing differential emission measures (DEMs) using solar coronal data. The method consists of a fast, simple regularized inversion in conjunction with an iteration scheme for removal of residual negative emission measure. On average, it computes over 1000 DEMs s­1 for a sample active region observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory, and achieves reduced chi­squared of order unity with no negative emission in all but a few test cases. The high performance of this method is especially relevant in the context of AIA, which images of order one million solar pixels per second. This paper describes the method, analyzes its fidelity, compares its performance and results with other DEM methods, and applies it to an active region and loop observed by AIA and by the Extreme­ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer on Hinode.