Using quasars as standard clocks for measuring cosmological redshift

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to determine quasar redshifts by analyzing light curve patterns, enabling quasars to serve as standard clocks for cosmological measurements.

Contribution

It presents two new methods for estimating quasar redshifts from light curve analysis, revealing patterns that relate slopes in light curves to redshift values.

Findings

Quasar light curve slopes correlate with redshift.

Redshift ratios can be derived from light curve overlaps.

Quasars can be used as standard clocks for cosmology.

Abstract

We report hitherto unnoticed patterns in quasar light curves. We characterize segments of quasars' light curves with the slopes of the straight lines fit through them. These slopes appear to be directly related to the quasars' redshifts. Alternatively, using only global shifts in time and flux, we are able to find significant overlaps between the light curves of different pairs of quasars by fitting the ratio of their redshifts. We are then able to reliably determine the redshift of one quasar from another. This implies that one can use quasars as standard clocks, as we explicitly demonstrate by constructing two independent methods of finding the redshift of a quasar from its light curve.