Validation of Linear Polarization Tomographic Inversion for the 3D Reconstruction of the Solar Coronal Magnetic Fields

Abstract This paper presents a quantitative assessment of the accuracy of the linear polarization (LP) tomographic inversion algorithm for the reconstruction of the 3D coronal magnetic fields. A magnetohydrodynamic model of the solar corona during solar minimum generated by Predictive Science, Inc. was used to synthesize LP (Stokes- Q and - U ) observations of the Fe xiii 1075 nm coronal emission line produced by the saturated Hanle effect. The synthetic measurements are made by an observer situated at the solar equatorial plane and from 72 viewing directions with a 5 ∘ separation spanning over a range of 180 ∘ in Carrington longitude. We did not introduce noise in the data and did not consider discretization errors. This allows us to study an ideal case, i.e., to show whether it is possible at all to get a better solution than the Potential Field with Source Surface (PFSS) model. The inversion results show that the LP tomography outperforms the PFSS model in reconstruction of the both magnetic field strength and direction.