Peculiar emission line generation from ultra-rapid quasi-periodic oscillations of exotic astronomical objects

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to alert Astronomers, particularly those using spectroscopic surveys, to the fact that exotic astronomical objects (e.g. quasars or active galactic nuclei) that send ultra-rapid quasi periodic pulses of optical light would generate spectroscopic features that look like emission lines. This gives a simple technique to find quasi periodic pulses separated by times smaller than a nanosecond. One should look for emission lines that cannot be identified with known spectral lines in spectra. Such signals, generated by slower pulses, could also be found in the far infra-red, millimeter and radio regions, where they could be detected as objects unusually bright in a single narrow-band filter or channel. The outstanding interest of the technique comes from its simplicity so that it can be used to find ultra-rapid quasi-periodic oscillators in large astronomical surveys. A very small fraction of objects presently identified as Lyman alpha emitters that do not have other spectral features to confirm the Lyman alpha redshift, may possibly be quasi-periodic oscillators. However this is only a hypothesis that needs more observations for confirmation.