Three-Dimensional Reconstruction of the Electron Density in the Solar Corona

The need to understand the Sun's magnetic field motivates much of present-day solar physics research. Our ultimate goal is to quantitatively validate models of the global coronal magnetic field by comparing forward models of synthetic data to real observations. As a necessary first step, we seek to build a three-dimensional (3D) model of the electron density in the solar corona, based on white-light coronagraph data. Given that these observations are two-dimensional snapshots, we employ a new application of statistical tomography to piece together the full 3D picture. In an initial step, we demonstrate that our method is capable of reconstructing geometrically-simple density formations. We next turn to more realistic coronal density structures as represented by the global magnetohydrodynamic models made available by Predictive Science Inc., and integrated to create synthetic data using the FORWARD SolarSoft codes. Finally, we consider the application of our method to Mauna Loa Solar Observatory K-Coronagraph observations, and discuss the strengths and limitations of our method.