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CV Evolution (ctd)
Zwaan & Verbunt suggested that at 3hr the magnetic braking switches off, because secondaries with this mass are fully convective, so stellar dynamo is quenched
Mass transfer rate then is reduced, so secondary falls away from Roche Lobe, and mass transfer stops, so these systems are not seen as CVs
Then gravitational radiation would continue to operate, slowly driving the two stars together, until contact with the Roche Lobe was reestablished and accretion restarted: the origin of the <2hr binaries
While this has been the ³standard² explanation for some time, questions have always remained about the real effect of fully convective secondaries on the generation of magnetic field by the dynamo
Some evidence for this mechanism clear from the absence of a significant gap in the magnetic systems, in which braking is affected by the field from the primary (in addition to that from the secondary)