Abstract
Angular momentum loss by magnetic braking is believed to be an important mechanism in the evolution of tidally-locked white dwarf (WD) bina- ries. We measure the X-ray emission of a sample of M dwarfs in pre-cataclysmic variable systems to examine for the first time, if the magnetic activity of sec- ondary stars in tidally-locked white dwarf binaries is the same as that of their sin- gle main-sequence counterparts. Our results support the extrapolation of mag- netic braking prescriptions derived from single main-sequence stars to tidally- locked WD binaries, and therefore support recent results that indicate magnetic braking plays a smaller role than previously proposed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | In: Procs of the 15th European Workshop on White Dwarfs - ASP Conf Series 372 |
| Publisher | Astronomical Society of the Pacific |
| Pages | 497-500 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-1-58381-239-6, 978-1-58381-306-5 |
| Publication status | Published - 2007 |