Entropic Approach to Multiscale Clustering Analysis

Abstract: Recently, a novel method has been introduced to estimate the statistical significance of clustering in the direction distribution of objects. The method involves a multiscale procedure, based on the Kullback–Leibler divergence and the Gumbel statistics of extreme values, providing high discrimination power, even in presence of strong background isotropic contamination. It is shown that the method is: (i) semi-analytical, drastically reducing computation time; (ii) very sensitive to small, medium and large scale clustering; (iii) not biased against the null hypothesis. Applications to the physics of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, as a cosmological probe, are presented and discussed.