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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
There is growing evidence of complex white dwarf magnetic fields in CVs (e.g. Meggitt & Wickramasinghe 1989; Robinson & Cordova 1994). The properties of systems with non-dipolar white dwarf magnetic fields have been investigated, and it was found that a non-negligible quadrupole component is essential for the magnetic locking of AM Her binaries (AM Hers) (Wu & Wickramasinghe 1993). In a recent study the ratio of the quadrupole to dipole component of the surface field of white dwarfs was shown to grow by a factor of 10 during the white dwarf cooling lifetime (Muslimov, van Horn & Wood 1995), thus the quadrupole field component is long lived and significant.