AE Aquarii has a 1.18 ratio of five-minute fluctuation power between orbital halves in TESS Sector 81

We test whether five-minute optical changes in AE Aquarii prefer one half of the binary orbit. We use 72,544 selected 20-second samples from TESS Sector 81 in 2024. We remove a three-harmonic orbital mean and subtract endpoint error variance from squared flux differences. The test uses 70,659 pairs in 47 orbital blocks with data. Second-half power divided by first-half power is 1.180. The central 95% of 20,000 whole-orbit bootstrap draws span 0.740 to 1.839. A conditional phase-rotation control gives p = 0.452. All tested sensitivity ranges include one. The data do not resolve a preferred orbital half. Noise-model checks with the observed sampling give 94.3% coverage for Gaussian AR(1) noise and 90.3% for Poisson exponential shots, from 300 trials each. Thus the bootstrap draw range is not a calibrated 95% confidence bound for the source. The result applies to this visit, this band, and this measure of rapid change. The package includes the unchanged input file, source records, code, tables, figures, and simulation trials.

AE Aquarii · TESS · cataclysmic variables · optical variability · orbital phase · structure function · block bootstrap · reproducible research