Period analysis for simultaneous multichannel photometric observations

The! method of three stage weighted period analysis is generalized for simu ltaneous multichannel observations. The new method is based on the phase di spersion minimization over all channels simultaneously. The three stages in the full algorithm are phase dispersion minimization method (PDM), linear modeling (LM) and nonlinear modeling (NLM). Simple computational tests of t he multichannel period analysis (MPA) are presented. We show that the metho d has advantages if compared with methods where single channels are analyse d separately. We derive a general formula for spurious periods and demonstr ate that the interpretation of peaks in the PDM spectra cain be more compli cated than in classical power spectra.