2025/12/12 by Tripathi, Ashutosh, Wiita, Paul J., Smith, Krista Lynne
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.11266
openalex publication_date 2025/12/12 · openalex created_date 2025/12/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This work presents possible quasi-periodic oscillations in the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite observations of blazars that are in the 157-month hard X-ray survey done by Swift's Burst Alert Telescope. We report observations from four sources, J1104.4+3812, J1654.0+3946, J0353.4-6830, and J1941.3-6216, that show at least 3σ local significance in generalized Lomb-Scargle periodogram and weighted wavelet Z-transform methods. These results are also checked using a continuous autoregressive moving average analysis that also predicts the absent data tentatively using stochastic differential equations. Each of these four sources exhibits a nominal QPO signal frequency in the range of 0.5--1.1 d-1, resulting in at least 5 putative cycles. However, when the number of frequencies examined and the number of sources examined are both taken into account, the global significances are reduced to ≈2.2σ for J1654.0+3964 (Mrk 501), and to ≈1.9σ for other sources. These QPOs are thought to arise from the processes within the relativistic jet. Plausible explanations include the kink instability, which arises due to current-driven instabilities in the plasma or the precession of substructures, or mini-jets, within the jets.