{"paper":{"title":"A Note on QPE Timing: False Alarms in O-C","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"astro-ph.HE","authors_text":"Cong Zhou, Wen Zhao, Zhen Pan, Zirui Zhang","submitted_at":"2026-05-28T05:36:12Z","abstract_excerpt":"O-C timing analysis is a useful diagnostic tool for quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs), but their interpretation depends sensitively on the integer cycle number assigned to each eruption. In this note, we show that even a small mismatch in the cycle number, $N_{\\rm cyc}$, can produce large false signals in O-C diagrams, and \\emph{a universal feature of these false signals is a large in-phase sinusoidal modulation between even and odd eruptions.} Therefore, uncertainties in $N_{\\rm cyc}$ must be inferred or marginalized over before physical interpretations are attached to O-C. We then apply both O"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2605.29382","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.29382/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}