An investigation of the manner in which individual pulsar pulses combine to form a stable integrated profile is presented. The stabilization time is found to be closely related to pulsar type, with sources that exhibit drifting subpulses stabilizing most rapidly and the multicomponent sources requiring the largest number of pulses to establish a constant profile shape. The mode-changing phenomenon is investigated in detail for PSR 0329+54 over the frequency range from 150 to 1400 MHz. Evidence for mode changes with a short memory time scale is presented for other multicomponent sources. Secular changes in integrated profile shape over periods of days to years were searched for but not found.
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Helfand et al. (1975) studied this question.