Quasi-periodic eruption spectral-timing: EMRIs crossing warped accretion disks

Abstract

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are repeating X-ray transients from galactic nuclei potentially caused by a stellar-mass orbiter repeatedly colliding with the accretion disk of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in an extreme mass-ratio inspiral (EMRI). In this picture, the eruption arrival times encode the orbit and its relativistic precessions, while the quiescent spectral energy distribution (SED) probes the same disk and SMBH, providing two independent constraints on the same orbit-disk system. We present a joint spectral-timing framework that takes advantage of this by simultaneously fitting an analytic QPE timing model built on Kerr geodesic frequencies and a warped disk geometry, coupled to a self-irradiated disk SED model sharing the same SMBH mass, spin, and disk parameters. We apply it to the QPE sources GSN 069 and eRO-QPE2, showing that the QPE timings and quiescent spectra can be reproduced simultaneously in each, providing circumstantial support for the EMRI model and warped disks in these systems. However, given the sparse timing data in both sources, neither admits a unique solution. In eRO-QPE2, we identify six physical modes which reproduce the timings and SED comparably well, motivating denser observing campaigns to identify one unambiguously. Our results demonstrate both the promise of QPE spectral-timing as a precision probe of SMBHs, their accretion disks, and orbiting companions, and the aliasing subtleties of sparsely sampled QPE timings.