Fast algorithm for spectral analysis of unevenly sampled data

Abstract

The Lomb-Scargle method performs spectral analysis on unevenly sampled data and is known to be a powerful way to find, and test the significance of, weak periodic signals. The method has previously been thought to be 'slow', requiring of order 10(2)N(2) operations to analyze N data points. We show that Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) can be used in a novel way to make the computation of order 10(2)N log N. Despite its use of the FFT, the algorithm is in no way equivalent to conventional FFT periodogram analysis.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1086/167197

Citations and references