Understanding the Lomb–Scargle Periodogram

2017/03/28 by Jake Vanderplas, Jacob T. VanderPlas · 3 voices · 31 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Blind Source Separation Techniques #Chaos control and synchronization #Fractal and DNA sequence analysis #astro-ph.IM

paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4365/aab766

openalex publication_date 2018/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

Abstract The Lomb–Scargle periodogram is a well-known algorithm for detecting and characterizing periodic signals in unevenly sampled data. This paper presents a conceptual introduction to the Lomb–Scargle periodogram and important practical considerations for its use. Rather than a rigorous mathematical treatment, the goal of this paper is to build intuition about what assumptions are implicit in the use of the Lomb–Scargle periodogram and related estimators of periodicity, so as to motivate important practical considerations required in its proper application and interpretation.

Citations

• Least-squares frequency analysis of unequally spaced data
• Studies in astronomical time series analysis. II - Statistical aspects of spectral analysis of unevenly spaced data
• Using NFFT 3---A Software Library for Various Nonequispaced Fast Fourier Transforms

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Discussions

• This is a superb paper for understanding some of the issues and limitations with Lomb-Scargle, NUDFT, etc: arxiv.org/abs/1703.09824 [bsky, 4 points, 0 comments]
• You might even have a use for Lomb-Scargle :-) [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
• Understanding the Lomb-Scargle Periodogram [hn, 1 points, 0 comments]

Related

• A critical comparison of the Lomb-Scargle and the classical periodograms
• Frequency estimation based on the cumulated Lomb-Scargle periodogram
• Studies in astronomical time series analysis. II - Statistical aspects of spectral analysis of unevenly spaced data
• Mind the gaps: improved methods for the detection of periodicities in unevenly-sampled data
• nifty-ls: Fast and Accurate Lomb-Scargle Periodograms Using a Non-Uniform FFT