Forward-fitting STIX visibilities

Aima. To determine to what extent the problem of forward fitting visibilities measured by the Spectrometer/Telescope Imaging X-rays (STIX) on-board Solar Orbiter is more challenging with respect to the same problem in the case of previous hard X-ray solar imaging missions; to identify an effective optimization scheme for parametric imaging for STIX. Methods. This paper introduces a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm for forward fitting STIX visibilities and compares its effectiveness with respect to the standard simplex-based optimization algorithm used so far for the analysis of visibilities measured by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). This comparison is made by considering experimental visibilities measured by both RHESSI and STIX, and synthetic visibilities generated by accounting for the STIX signal formation model. Results. We found out that the parametric imaging approach based on PSO is as reliable as the one based on the simplex method in the case of RHESSI visibilities. However, PSO is significantly more robust when applied to STIX simulated and experimental visibilities. Conclusions. Standard deterministic optimization is not effective enough for forward-fitting the few visibilities sampled by STIX in the angular frequency plane. Therefore a more sofisticated optimization scheme must be introduced for parametric imaging in the case of the Solar Orbiter X-ray telescope. The forward-fitting routine based on PSO we introduced in this paper proved to be significantly robust and reliable, and could be considered as an effective candidate tool for parametric imaging in the STIX context.