Institute for Advanced Study/Princeton University Joint Astrophysics Colloquium

I review the physics of launching, acceleration, and propagation of radiation driven winds. I will consider two kinds of outflows powered by radiation emitted from the AGN central engine: (1) outflows driven from the innermost part of a black hole accretion disk and (2) outflows driven from a large-scale inflow. I discuss the relevance of both types of outflows to the so-called AGN feedback problem. However, as the AGN feedback should not be considered separately from the inner working of AGN, I also discuss the issue whether the properties of the same outflows are consistent with the observed gas properties in broad- and narrow-line regions of AGN.