Grouping flare peaks at 3 hours reduces the mean size–gap contrast by 0.167 in 88 selected TESS M dwarfs

We test whether larger groups of fitted stellar flare peaks have longer gaps after them than before them. We use the Günther et al. TESS sectors 1 and 2 catalog and exact cadence extracts from 243 light curves. We remove 24 repeated measurements in the retrieved CDS snapshot. We define groups by joining adjacent peaks at most 3 hours apart. Group bounds are the first and last fitted peaks, not optical emission bounds. For each star and sector, we calculate the size correlation with the next gap minus that with the previous gap. We average sectors within stars, then give each star equal weight. The primary sample has 88 M dwarfs, 97 cells, and 1,085 focal triplets. Its mean contrast is −0.067, with a 95% star bootstrap interval of −0.166 to 0.033. An added descriptive check uses the same stars and cells for separate peaks and groups. Separate peaks give 0.100. The paired reduction under grouping is 0.167, with an interval of 0.068 to 0.268. All 14 specified analyses are reported. The result measures sensitivity to event definition in this selected catalog. It does not establish a physical recovery process. Detection bias, optical tails, and later processing of the coverage data remain limits. Code, derived tables, source hashes, cadence extracts, trial coefficients, and independent checks permit inspection and reproduction.

TESS · M dwarfs · stellar flares · waiting times · event grouping · catalog audit · reproducible research