Temperature Distribution of a Non-flaring Active Region from Simultaneous Hinode XRT and EIS Observations

Abstract

We analyze coordinated Hinode X-ray Telescope (XRT) and Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) observations of a non-flaring active region to investigate the thermal properties of coronal plasma taking advantage of the complementary diagnostics provided by the two instruments. In particular, we want to explore the presence of hot plasma in non-flaring regions. Independent temperature analyses from the XRT multi-filter data set, and the EIS spectra, including the instrument entire wavelength range, provide a cross-check of the different temperature diagnostics techniques applicable to broadband and spectral data, respectively, and insights into cross-calibration of the two instruments. The emission measure distributions, (EM(T)), we derive from the two data sets have similar width and peak temperature, but show a systematic shift of the absolute values, the EIS (EM(T)) being smaller than the XRT (EM(T)) by approximately a factor two. We explore possible causes of this discrepancy, and we discuss the influence of the assumptions for the plasma element abundances. Specifically, we find that the disagreement between the results from the two instruments is significantly mitigated by assuming chemical composition closer to the solar photospheric composition rather than the often adopted "coronal" composition. We find that the data do not provide conclusive evidence on the high temperature (log T(K) >~ 6.5) tail of the plasma temperature distribution, however, suggesting its presence to a level in agreement with recent findings for other non-flaring regions.