Time-dependent phase diagram, i.e. the light curve amplitude profile over phase (y-axis) plotted as function of time (x-axis), for the mismatched carrier frequency example presented in Sect. 3.2. In this plot, a slightly too low carrier frequency of ν₀ = 0.148714 is used, with K = 1 model and L = 8 modulation harmonics. Time points are obtained from real V-band photometric observations of LQ Hya; the bar-code in the bottom of the plot indicates when data has been available (black) and the gaps (bright). For visualization details see Sect. 2.6.