Milli Arcsecond MAS Imaging of the Solar Corona

Dissipation in the solar corona is believed to occur in extremely thin current sheets of order 1-100 km. Emission from these hot but thin current sheets should be visible in coronal EUV emission lines. However, this spatial scale is far below the resolution of existing imaging instruments, so these dissipation sites have never been observed individually. Conventional optics cannot be manufactured with sufficient surface figure accuracy to obtain the required spatial resolution in the extreme-ultraviolet where these hot plasmas radiate. A photon sieve, a diffractive imaging element similar to a Fresnel zone plate, can be manufactured to provide a few milli-arcsec (MAS) resolution, with much more readily achievable tolerances than with conventional imaging technology. Prototype photon sieve elements have been fabricated and tested in the laboratory. A full-scale ultra-high resolution instrument will require formation flying and computational image deconvolution. Significant progress has been made in overcoming these challenges, and some recent results in these areas are discussed. A simple design for a sounding rocket concept demonstration payload is presented that obtains 80 MAS (0.080 arcsec) imaging with a 100 mm diameter photon sieve to image Fe XIV 334 and Fe XVI 335. These images will show the structure of the corona at a resolution never before obtained, and they will also allow a study of the temperature structure in the dissipation region