In oscillatory shear experiments, the values of the storage and loss moduli,
$G^{\prime }(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$
and
$G^{\prime \prime }(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$
, respectively, are only measured and recorded for a number of
values of the frequency
$\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}$
in some well-defined finite range
$[\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{\text{min}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{\text{max}}]$
. In many practical situations, when the range
$[\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{\text{min}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{\text{max}}]$
is sufficiently large, information about the associated polymer
dynamics can be assessed by simply comparing the interrelationship between the
frequency dependence of
$G^{\prime }(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$
and
$G^{\prime \prime }(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$
. For other situations, the required rheological insight can only be
obtained once explicit knowledge about the structure of the relaxation time spectrum
$H(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F})$
has been determined through the inversion of the measured storage
and loss moduli
$G^{\prime }(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$
and
$G^{\prime \prime }(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$
. For the recovery of an approximation to
$H(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F})$
, in order to cope with the limited range
$[\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{\text{min}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{\text{max}}]$
of the measurements, some form of localization algorithm is
required. A popular strategy for achieving this is to assume that
$H(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F})$
has a separated discrete point mass (Dirac delta function)
structure. However, this expedient overlooks the potential information contained in
the structure of a possibly continuous
$H(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F})$
. In this paper, simple localization algorithms and, in particular,
a joint inversion least squares procedure, are proposed for the rapid recovery of
accurate approximations to continuous
$H(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F})$
from limited measurements of
$G^{\prime }(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$
and
$G^{\prime \prime }(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714})$
.