MagTAP

MagTAP (Magnetar Timing Analysis Pipeline) is a Python pipeline to simplify folding and timing Magnetar data, built for Magnetar Timing research group at the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC).

MagTAP uses PRESTO, the standard tool for pulsar data anaysis, for folding and timing data.

MagTAP pipeline consists of:

1. rfifind
2. prepdata
3. prepfold
4. exploredat
5. get_TOAs.py

These steps are run sequentially, and MagTAP finds the required files (mask file and topocentric time series file) by itself, removing user interaction.

Installation

Installation using git clone is the recommended method:

❯ https://github.com/Kushaalkumar-pothula/MagTAP.git
❯ cd MagTAP

Usage

MagTAP is a command-line tool, and it accepts arguments, like files and values, as flags. To view help, use the -h or --help flag:

❯ python magtap.py --help
usage: magtap.py [-h] files parfile maskfile topofile timfile DM p

positional arguments:
  files       Name/glob pattern for the FITS files to be analyzed.
  parfile     Parameter file for the magnetar.
  maskfile    Mask file for rfifind.
  topofile    Topocentric time series file for prepdata.
  timfile     .tim file for GetTOAs.
  DM          DM of the magnetar.
  p           Period of the magnetar.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

Requirements

MagTAP requires:

• Python >= 3.7

Known Bugs

The only bug is that get_TOAs.py (5th step) is not able to get arguments, this is expected to be resolved soon.

Author

This code was written by Kushaal Kumar Pothula during his junior year of high school, as a member of magnetar timing research team @ Pulsar Search Collaboratory.