X-Ray Illumination Models of Soft X-Ray Transients

From Common Envelope to Pre-Cataclysmic Variables: An Observational Test of Common Envelope Evolution

“…After accretion of 0.1.. .0.2M® the radius will expand by a factor of a few and the secondary fills its Roche lobe and mass loss begins. But now mass loss (transfer) is unstable, as pointed out by Hameury et al (1993). The separation and period at this stage start to increase, because now the mass of the carbon-oxygen core is greater than the mass of the secondary star.…”

Secular Evolution of Cataclysmic Variables with Irradiation-Induced Mass Transfer

“…Here we shall not make use of this result because it does not apply to the whole mass range of interest. Rather we shall base our discussion on very general properties of the function g and on results of numerical calculations of g performed using the code described by Hameury et al (1993). First of all it is important to notice the following general properties of the function g(x) which are entirely model independent:…”

“…The possible importance of the reaction of a low-mass star to external irradiation for the long-term evolution of compact binaries has been noted only rather recently; first in the context of the evolution of low-mass X-ray binaries (e.g. Podsiadlowski 1991;Harpaz & Rappaport 1991;Frank, King & Lasota 1992;Hameury et al 1993) and subsequently by Ritter, Zhang & Kolb (1995a,b, hereafter RZK) also for the evolution of cataclysmic variables (CVs). Based on a simple model for describing the reaction of a lowmass star to irradiation RZK showed that CVs can be dynamically unstable against irradiation-induced mass transfer and that, as a consequence of this, mass transfer could occur via cycles in which phases of high, irradiationenhanced mass transfer alternate with phases of little or no mass transfer.…”

The Reaction of Low-Mass Stars to Anisotropic Irradiation and its Implications for the Secular Evolution of Cataclysmic Binaries

“…The possible importance of the reaction of low-mass stars to external irradiation for the long-term evolution of compact binaries has been realized only rather recently in the context of the evolution of low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). So far, most papers have dealt with this problem in spherical symmetry and in the limit of the very high incident fluxes relevant for LMXBs (Podsiadlowski 1991;Harpaz & Rappaport 1991;Frank et al 1992;Hameury et al 1993). The limit of low flux, but still in spherical symmetry, has been considered by D' Antona & Ergma (1993).…”

“…The limit of low flux, but still in spherical symmetry, has been considered by D' Antona & Ergma (1993). Anisotropic irradiation in the limit of high flux has been studied by Gontikakis & Hameury (1993), Hameury et al (1993) and by Ritter (1994). To the best of our knowledge, anisotropic irradiation in the limit of low flux has not been considered so far.…”