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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
Cataclysmic binaries with a black-dwarf secondary can in principle be distinguished from those containing a low-mass main-sequence secondary because of the differences of the corresponding eclipse light curves. However, due to the very low intrinsic luminosity of the systems containing a black dwarf, the probability of detection turns out to be smaller than the corresponding probability for an ordinary cataclysmic binary by about 1.5 to 3 orders of magnitude. Therefore, despite the fact that the predicted space density of these objects is quite high, systems containing a black-dwarf secondary must remain essentially undetectable.