Three-dimensional Density Structure of a Solar Coronal Streamer Observed by SOHO/LASCO and STEREO/COR2 in Quadrature

Abstract

Helmet streamers are a prominent manifestation of magnetic structures with current sheets in the solar corona. These large-scale structures are regions with high plasma density, overlying active regions and filament channels. We investigate the three-dimensional (3D) structure of a coronal streamer, observed simultaneously by white-light coronagraphs from two vantage points near quadrature (the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)/Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) and the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO)/Coronagraph 2 (COR2)). We design a forward model based on plausible assumptions about the 3D streamer structure taken from physical models (a plasma slab centered around a current sheet). The streamer stalk is approximated by a plasma slab, with an electron density that is characterized by three separate functions describing the radial, transverse, and face-on profiles, respectively. For the first time, we simultaneously fit the observational data from SOHO and STEREO using a multivariate minimization algorithm. The streamer plasma sheet contains a number of brighter and darker ray-like structures with the density contrast up to about a factor of 3 between them. The densities derived using polarized and unpolarized data are similar. We demonstrate that our model corresponds well to the observations.