Twin peak quasi-periodic oscillations and the kinematics of orbital motion in a curved space-time

Abstract: Twin peak high frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (HF QPOs) observed in the power spectra of Low Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXBs), with either a black hole or a neutron star, have central frequencies that are typical of the orbital motion time-scale close to the compact object. Thus, twin HF QPOs might carry the fingerprint of physical effects in a strongly curved space-time. We study the azimuth phase \phi(t) for orbital motion in the Schwarzschild metric and calculate the power spectra to check whether they display the features seen in the observed ones. We show that the timing of \phi(t) on non-closed orbits can account for the observed twin peak HF QPOs. The uppermost couple of peaks in frequency has the lower peak that corresponds to the azimuthal frequency \nu_{\phi}, the upper one to \nu_{\phi}+\nu_r. The azimuth phase temporal behavior \phi(t) on a slightly eccentric orbit in the Schwarzschild metric is described by a linear function of slope \nu_{\phi} plus an oscillating term at the relativistic radial frequency \nu_r. We deduce that the twin peak HF QPOs might originate from a frequency modulated (FM) signal driven by the kinematics of orbital motion in a curved space-time.