WARM AND FUZZY: TEMPERATURE AND DENSITY ANALYSIS OF AN Fe xv EUV IMAGING SPECTROMETER LOOP

The Hinode EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) and X-Ray Telescope (XRT) were designed in part to work together. They have the same spatial resolution and cover different but overlapping coronal temperature ranges. These properties make a combined data set ideal for multithermal analysis, where EIS provides the best information on the cooler corona (log T < 6.5) and XRT provides the best information on the hotter corona (log T > 6.5). Here, we analyze a warm non-flaring loop detected in images made in a strong EIS Fe xv emission line with a wavelength of 284.16 angstrom and peak formation temperature of log T = 6.3. We perform differential emission measure (DEM) analysis in three pixels at different heights above the footpoint and find multithermal results with the bulk of the emission measure in the range 6.0 < log T < 6.6. Analysis with the EIS lines alone gave a DEM with huge amounts of emission measure at very high temperatures (log T > 7.2); analysis with XRT data alone resulted in a DEM that was missing most of the cooler emission measure required to produce many of the EIS lines. Thus, both results were misleading and unphysical. It was only by combining the EIS and XRT data that we were able to produce a reasonable result, one without ad hoc assumptions on the shape and range of the DEM itself.