Forward fitting STIX visibilities

Aims. We seek to determine to what extent the problem of forward fitting visibilities measured by the Spectrometer/Telescope Imaging X-rays (STIX) on board Solar Orbiter becomes more challenging with respect to the same problem in the case of previous hard X-ray solar imaging missions. In addition, we aim to identify an effective optimization scheme for parametric imaging for STIX. Methods. This paper introduces a global search optimization for forward-fitting STIX visibilities and compares its effectiveness with respect to the standard simplex-based optimization used so far for the analysis of visibilities measured by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). We made this comparison by considering experimental visibilities measured by both RHESSI and STIX, as weel as synthetic visibilities generated by accounting for the STIX signal formation model. Results. We found that among the three global search algorithms for parametric imaging, particle swarm optimization (PSO) exhibits the best performances in terms of both stability and computational effectiveness. This method is as reliable as the simplex method in the case of RHESSI visibilities. However, PSO is significantly more robust when applied to STIX simulated and experimental visibilities. Conclusions. A standard optimization based on local search of minima is not effective enough for forward-fitting the few visibilities sampled by STIX in the spatial frequency plane. Therefore, more sophisticated optimization schemes based on global search must be introduced for parametric imaging in the case of the Solar Orbiter X-ray telescope. The forward-fitting routine based on PSO proved to be significantly robust and reliable, and it could be considered as an effective candidate tool for parametric imaging in the STIX context.