AE Aquarii TESS Sector 81 data limit coherent pulse change below 1% of brightness change for a fixed spin clock

We test the extra red light in bright states of AE Aquarii for a stable 33-second spin signal. We use the public TESS Sector 81 light curve from 15 July to 10 August 2024. The fit uses 72,497 measurements at 20-second cadence. We compare five brightness states within binary orbital phase bins. We fit the fundamental and its first harmonic together. The fit includes local linear trends and the linear response of ten short exposures in each sample. The bright and faint states differ by 836.96 electrons per second in mean aperture flux. Their fundamental coefficient vectors have no clear difference. We use 600-second trends and independent orbital noise blocks. An approximate 95% upper bound on the vector change is 4.20 electrons per second before exposure averaging. This is 0.502% of the brightness difference. Separate checks of trend length, noise blocks, time halves, flux correction, image position, and nearby clocks give bounds below 1%. The complete-visit fundamental amplitude has an upper bound of 245 parts per million of median aperture light. The TESS evidence for this pulse is weak. The result assumes that the extrapolated spin clock is valid and that upstream processing preserves the stated linear response. The frequency bounds are pointwise. They do not exclude signals with unstable phase or short pulse bursts. The input FITS file, source code, provenance, numerical results, three figures, and reproduction commands are included.

AE Aquarii · TIC 248138854 · TESS Sector 81 · white dwarf · spin pulse · brightness states · coherent light · upper bound · public astronomy data