Program Name: FAST_MEPSA (FAST multi-excess peak search algorithm)
Author: Manuele Maistrello @ University of Ferrara, Italy
Version: 1.0
Date: July 2025

1) PURPOSE
------------------
Search an input time series for peaks.
Input time series is supposed to be background-subtracted (or just detrended),
evenly spaced, affected by uncorrelated Gaussian noise.
It is a FAST version of original MEPSA (Guidorzi 2015, A&C).


2) INSTALL
------------------
Unpack the tgz file in your home directory, or wherever
you want:

tar zxvf FAST_MEPSA.tgz

It creates a directory called "FAST_MEPSA".
Enter the FAST_MEPSA directory.
The program language is plain C code and its compilation
is straightforward:

cc -o fast_mepsa.exe fast_mepsa.c -lm

At this point you should store the executable in a directory
included in your PATH.



3) EXCESS PATTERNS MASK FILE
-------------------------
There are two possible alternative pattern files:
1) file name: excess_pattern_MEPSA_v0.dat  (39 pattern, originally used by MEPSA)
1) file name: excess_pattern_MEPSA_v1.dat  (40 pattern, introduced along with FAST_MEPSA)


The excess patterns' mask files should not be modified unless
one aims at optimising the code to one's own need (in which
case we recommend a preliminary thorough testing before trusting
the results.



4) TEST
------------------
An input light curve is provided in the MEPSA/test/ directory.
To make sure the executable yields correct results, we provide
an example.

fast_mepsa.exe input_lc.dat ~/FAST_MEPSA/excess_pattern_MEPSA_v1.dat 256 > fast_mepsa.out

Make sure the output content, saved to 'fast_mepsa.out' in the command
line above, is the same as that in file 'output.fast_mepsa.out'.



5) USAGE
------------------
3 arguments are required:
   1. input time series (3 columns: time, rate, error on rate)
   2. excess patterns' file
   3. maximum rebin factor to be searched

Argument 2 is provided together with the present C code.
This could be changed by users themselves according to their need. In this
case, we recommend preliminary thorough testing before trusting the results.
Example:

fast_mepsa.exe input_lc.dat ~/FAST_MEPSA/excess_pattern_MEPSA_v1.dat 512 > fast_mepsa.out