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

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

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