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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
Recent theories of the origin and evolution of contact binaries suggest that the two stars evolve into contact through angular momentum loss (AML; Mochnacki 1981, Vilhu 1982). When in contact, the system then evolves toward smaller mass ratio through mass transfer from the secondary to the primary component (Webbink 1976, Rahunen and Vilhu 1982). Most contact binaries have mass ratios of 0.3 to 0.5.