The analysis of indexed astronomical time series – XI. The statistics of oversampled white noise periodograms

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Date

2015

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Abstract

The distribution of the maxima of periodograms is considered in the case where the time series is made up of regularly sampled, uncorrelated Gaussians. It is pointed out that if there is no oversampling, then for large data sets, the known distribution of maxima tends to a oneparameter Gumbel distribution. Simulations are used to demonstrate that for oversampling by large factors, a two-parameter Gumbel distribution provides a highly accurate representation of the simulation results. As the oversampling approaches the continuous limit, the twoparameter Gumbel distribution takes on a simple form which depends only on the logarithm of the number of data. Subsidiary results are the autocorrelation function of the oversampled periodogram; expressions for the accuracy of simulated percentiles; and the relation between percentiles of the periodogram and the amplitude spectrum.

Description

Keywords

Astronomy, Gaussians, Gumbel distribution, Periodograms, Statistics, Large data sets

Citation

Koen, C. (2015). The analysis of indexed astronomical time series – XI. The statistics of oversampled white noise periodograms. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 449(1): 1098-1105.