riptide: Finding pulsars with the Fast Folding Algorithm (FFA)

riptide (“searching for pulsars in the time domain”) is a pulsar searching package that implements the Fast Folding Algorithm (FFA), the theoretically optimal search method for periodic signals. Its interface is entirely in python while the core algorithms are implemented in C++. riptide provides:

• A library of functions and classes to manipulate and search individual dedispersed time series

• A pipeline executable to process a set of DM trials and output a list of candidate files, plots and other data products

Citation

If using riptide contributes to a project that leads to a scientific publication, please cite the article: Optimal periodicity searching: Revisiting the Fast Folding Algorithm for large scale pulsar surveys

Contents:

• Installation
• Quickstart Guide
  • Loading and generating data
  • Computing and manipulating Periodograms
  • Peak Detection Algorithm
  • Making a sub-integrations plot
  • The Metadata attribute
  • The rseek command-line app
• FFA kernel functions
• Using the Pipeline
  • RFI Mitigation
  • Choosing the optimal DM step
  • Dedispersing the data
  • Configuring the riptide pipeline
    • Number of parallel processes
    • Data format and band parameters
    • DM trial selection
    • Red noise subtraction
    • Defining the search space
    • Peak clustering and harmonic flagging
    • Candidate filters and plotting
  • Running the Pipeline
  • Data products
• Docker Image
• API Reference
  • TimeSeries
  • ffa_search
  • find_peaks
  • Periodogram
  • Candidate
  • Save / Load data
  • Kernel Functions

Indices and tables

• Index

• Module Index

• Search Page