A FAST CHI-SQUARED TECHNIQUE FOR PERIOD SEARCH OF IRREGULARLY SAMPLED DATA

2009/01/14 by David M. Palmer, D. M. Palmer · 2 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Electrical Measurement Techniques #Advancements in PLL and VCO Technologies #Scientific Research and Discoveries #astro-ph.IM #physics.data-an

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/695/1/496

published as Astrophys.J.695:496-502,2009 · Source code for the reference implementation is available at http://public.lanl.gov/palmer/fastchi.html . Accepted by ApJ. 24 pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2009/01/14 · openalex publication_date 2009/03/31 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

A new, computationally and statistically efficient algorithm, the Fast χ 2 algorithm (Fχ 2 ), can find a periodic signal with harmonic content in irregularly sampled data with nonuniform errors. The algorithm calculates the minimized χ 2 as a function of frequency at the desired number of harmonics, using fast Fourier transforms to provide O ( N log N ) performance. The code for a reference implementation is provided.

Citations

• Least-squares frequency analysis of unequally spaced data
• New periodic variables from theHipparcosepoch photometry
• The Design and Implementation of FFTW3

Cited by

• A comparative study of four significance measures for periodicity detection in astronomical surveys
• Least-squares spectral analysis [wikipedia]

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