Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 1984. 22: 471-506 Copyright © 1984 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

Reprinted with kind permission from Annual Reviews, 4139 El Camino Way, Palo Alto, California, USA

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Table of Contents

• INTRODUCTION
• INFERENCES INSENSITIVE TO DETAILED MODEL
• Some Fiducial Numbers
• Processes in Ultrahot Thermal Plasma
• Cyclotron/Synchrotron and Inverse Compton Cooling
• RADIAL ACCRETION FLOWS
• Spherical Accretion
• BLACK HOLES ACCORDING TO GENERAL RELATIVITY
• The Kerr Metric
• Three Astrophysically Important Relativistic Effects
• ACCRETION FLOWS WITH ANGULAR MOMENTUM
• Origin of Infalling Matter
• Thin Disks
• General Structure of Tori or Thick Disks
• RADIATION-SUPPORTED TORI
• Ion-Supported Tori
• JET FORMATION
• SOME COMMENTS ON PHENOMENOLOGY
• The Continuum Spectrum
• Ordinary QSOs
• Radio Galaxies
• Radio Quasars and Optically Violent Variables (OVVs)
• Hard X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Sources
• DEMOGRAPHY OF AGNs
• SOME CONCLUDING COMMENTS
• REFERENCES