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How to generate a phase curve of a pulsar or a gamma-ray binary?ΒΆ

So far there are no tools in ctools to generate phase curves of pulsars or gamma-ray binaries. A plugin for tempo2 is under development by the ctools developers, and you may get in touch with Thierry Reposeur (reposeur@in2p3.fr) for information about this development.

If you know the phase information of the pulsar or gamma-ray binary, you may specify a temporal model component of type PhaseCurve in the model definition file for the source and fit the information using an unbinned analysis. An example of a model definition file including a PhaseCurve model component is shown below. For more information, please read the following description of the temporal model components.

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>
<source_library title="source library">
  <source name="Crab" type="PointSource">
    <spatialModel type="PointSource">
      <parameter name="RA"  scale="1" value="83.6331" min="-360" max="360" free="0"/>
      <parameter name="DEC" scale="1" value="22.0145" min="-90"  max="90"  free="0"/>
    </spatialModel>
    <spectrum type="PowerLaw">
      <parameter name="Prefactor"   scale="1e-16" value="5.7"  min="1e-07" max="1000.0" free="1"/>
      <parameter name="Index"       scale="-1"    value="2.48" min="0.0"   max="+5.0"   free="1"/>
      <parameter name="PivotEnergy" scale="1e6"   value="0.3"  min="0.01"  max="1000.0" free="0"/>
    </spectrum>
    <temporal type="PhaseCurve" file="model_temporal_phasecurve.fits">
      <parameter name="Normalization" scale="1" value="1.0"     min="0.0" max="1000.0"   free="0"/>
      <parameter name="MJD"           scale="1" value="51544.5" min="0.0" max="100000.0" free="0"/>
      <parameter name="Phase"         scale="1" value="0.0"     min="0.0" max="1.0"      free="0"/>
      <parameter name="F0"            scale="1" value="1.0"     min="0.0" max="1000.0"   free="0"/>
      <parameter name="F1"            scale="1" value="0.1"     min="0.0" max="1000.0"   free="0"/>
      <parameter name="F2"            scale="1" value="0.01"    min="0.0" max="1000.0"   free="0"/>
    </temporal>
  </source>
</source_library>