Are X- and Z-shaped radio galaxies members of the same family?
” — X- and Z-shaped radio galaxies (XRGs/ZRGs) are a class of Fanaroff-Riley I/II radio galaxies in which the radio lobes exhibit a peculiar morphology. Instead of the symmetric double radio lobes typical of normal FR II galaxies, XRGs and ZRGs have pairs of secondary lobes that appear to be attached either to the primary radio lobes or else back to the active galactic nucleus itself. Recently, XRGs have been of interest to the gravitational wave community as a possible tracer of recent supermassive black hole mergers. However, competing models argue that these distorted morphologies can be produced by hydrodynamical effects. It is especially unclear whether XRG and ZRG morphologies are fundamentally different since the classification criteria are often imprecise and the radio data often low resolution. We present new and archival Chandra X-ray Observatory data in tandem with Very Large Array radio maps of these sources and show that the hot, X-ray emitting gas which would interact w
