Do Radio Active Galactic Nuclei Reflect X-ray Binary Spectral States?
  Over recent years there has been mounting evidence that accreting
supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN) and stellar mass black
holes have similar observational signatures: thermal emission from the
accretion disk, X-ray corona, and relativisitic jets. Further, there have been
investigations into whether or not AGN have spectral states similar to that of
X-ray binaries (XRBs) and what parallels can be drawn between the two using a
hardness-intensity diagram (HID). To address whether AGN jets might be related
to accretion states as in XRBs, we explore whether populations of radio-AGN
classified according to their radio jet morphology (Fanaroff-Riley classes I
and II; FR I and II), excitation class (HERG and LERG), and radio jet linear
extent (compact to giant) occupy different and distinct regions of the AGN
hardness-intensity diagram (total luminosity vs. hardness). We do this by cross
correlating 15 catalogs of radio galaxies with the desired characteristics from
the literature withXMM_Newton and Swift X-ray and ultraviolet (UV) source
catalogs. We calculate the luminosity and hardness from the X-ray and UV
photometry, place the sources on the AGN hardness-intensity diagram, and search
for separation of populations and analogies with the XRB spectral state HID. We
find that (a) FR Is and IIs, (b) HERGs and LERGs, (c) FR I-LERGs and FR
II-HERGs occupy distinct areas of the HID at a statistically significant level
(p-value < 0.05) and no clear evidence for population distinction between the
different radio jet linear extents. The separation between FR I-LERG and FR
II-HERG populations is the strongest in this work.Our results indicate that
radio-loud AGN occupy distinct areas of the HID depending on the morphology and
excitation class, showing strong similarities to XRBs.
