Efficient and robust calculation of femtoscopic correlation functions in spherical harmonics directly from the raw pairs measured in heavy-ion collisions

We present the formalism for calculating the femtoscopic correlation function directly in spherical harmonics. The numerator and denominator are stored as a set of one-dimensional histograms representing the spherical harmonic decompositions of each. We present the formalism to calculate the correlation function from them directly, without going to any three-dimensional histogram. We discuss the practical implementation of the method and we provide an example of its use. We also discuss the stability of the method in the presence of $\theta$-$\phi$ holes in the underlying data (e.g. from experimental acceptance).