Large scale reconstruction of the solar coronal magnetic field

Abstract

It is now becoming necessary to access the global magnetic structure of the solar low corona at a large scale in order to understand its physics and more particularly the conditions of energization of the magnetic fields and the multiple connections between distant active regions (ARs) which may trigger eruptive events in an almost coordinated way. Various vector magnetographs, either on board spacecraft or ground-based, currently allow to obtain vector synoptic maps, composite magnetograms made of multiple interactive ARs, and full disk magnetograms. We present a method recently developed for reconstructing the global solar coronal magnetic field as a nonlinear force-free magnetic field in spherical geometry, generalizing our previous results in Cartesian geometry. This method is implemented in the new code XTRAPOLS, which thus appears as an extension of our active region scale code XTRAPOL. We apply our method by performing a reconstruction at a specific time for which we dispose of a set of composite data constituted of a vector magnetogram provided by SDO/HMI, embedded in a larger full disk vector magnetogram provided by the same instrument, finally embedded in a synoptic map provided by SOLIS. It turns out to be possible to access the large scale structure of the corona and its energetic contents, and also the AR scale, at which we recover the presence of a twisted flux rope in equilibrium.