Statistical comparison of the observed and synthetic hydrogen Lyman line profiles in solar prominences

International audience Aims: We analyse a unique set of prominence SOHO/SUMER Lyman spectra by comparing it with synthetic spectra obtained by 2D multi-thread prominence fine-structure models. Methods: We employed a novel statistical approach to the analysis of the observed and synthetic Lyman spectra. We compared the statistical distributions of the line properties of the observed and synthetic Lyman spectra using a set of four statistical criteria. Results: We demonstrate the very good agreement between the observed Lyman spectra and synthetic spectra obtained by modelling. Conclusions: Our set of statistical criteria is well-suited to analyses of the prominence Lyman spectra because of its sensitivity to a number of different parameters governing the conditions in the prominence fine structures