The Analogous Structure of Accretion Flows in Supermassive and Stellar Mass Black Holes: New Insights from Faded Changing-Look Quasars

Understand

Despite their factor of ~10^8 difference in black hole mass, several lines of evidence suggest possible similarities between black hole accretion flows in active galactic nuclei (AGN) and Galactic X-ray binaries.

• However, it is still unclear whether the geometry of the disk-corona system in X-ray binaries directly scale up to AGN, and whether this analogy still holds in different accretion states.
• We test this AGN/X-ray binary analogy, by comparing the observed correlations between the UV-to-X-ray spectral index (alpha_OX) and Eddington ratio in AGN to those predicted from observations of X-ray binary outbursts.
• This approach probes the geometry of their disk-corona systems as they transition between different accretion states.