PSRCHIVE user documentation: pcm

Optimal selection of pulse phase bins for MEM

pcm can automatically choose the best on-pulse phase bins to use as model constraints. These are chosen from the pulsar archive specified with -c filename.

By default, pcm will select a mixture of pulse phase bins with the highest total intensity and the highest polarized flux. To specify a selection strategy, use -B name, where name selects the value to be maximized:

  • int - total intensity
  • pol - polarized flux
  • inv - invariant interval
  • orth - orthogonality
Orthogonality is maximized by choosing the phase bin with maximum polarized flux, then each subsequent phase bin that maximizes the magnitude of the vector cross product of p=(Q,U,V) with the previously chosen phase bin.

A mixture of values can be maximized by specifying a list of names separated by commas; e.g. to maximize the invariant interval and orthogonality 

pcm -c choose.ar -B inv,orth [...]
When more than one value is specified, each strategy will be used in turn for each phase bin selected.