Further information aabout the scientific use and accuracy of this task may be
found in the document, XMM-SOC-PS-TN-0043,
(available from http://xmm.vilspa.esa.es/calibration/)
Reformat the detector response and energy bounds information provided by the CAL for the given instrument, corrects for instrumental effects specific to the event selection criteria used and writes the result to a specified dataset (the Redistribution Matrix File or RMF). The dataset conforms to the OGIP standard ([3]).
The RMF matrix generated by rmfgen describes the response of the instrument as a function of energy and PI channel; PHA channel responses can not be generated by this task.
This dataset can be used in conjunction with the Ancillary Response File (ARF) dataset (generated by arfgen) to perform spectral analysis, the most commonly used analysis package being XSPEC.
Note that details of individual CCF constituents and how the CAL processes such data are beyond the scope of this document, and the reader should refer to the Calibration Access and Data Handbook for such information ([1]).
The task is set up to process spectra which have made with a standard PI range (PI=0-11999 for the MOS cameras and PI=0-20479 for the EPIC-pn camera). If any other range is used then the RMF will not be normalised properly. By default the task will exit with an error if the input spectrum has a non-standard PI range but it can be forced to produce an output RMF by setting the parameter acceptchanrange=yes on the command line.
The following list summarises the current and planned features of rmfgen:
|
Item |
Description | Status |
| 1 | Grouping of response data above a threshold value | implemented |
| 2 | Channel rebinning | implemented |
| 3 | Spectrum-response channel range matching | implemented |
| 4 | Observing mode dependence | implemented |
| 5 | Spatial dependence and averaging | implemented |
| 6 | User-defined energy grid | implemented |
| 7 | DSS support (including eg pattern selection) | implemented |
| 8 | Correction of spectral distortion due to pile-up | implemented |
