The lifetime of contact binaries

Abstract

AbstractThe lifetime of contact binaries is an important parameter for studying the evolution of contact binaries. By reproducing the relative frequency of occurrence for contact binaries, we found that the lifetime of contact binaries decreases with increasing mass of the primaries. The lifetime of contact binaries is about 4%–10% of the main sequence lifetime of the primaries, and is about 0.006–0.65 Gyr. This suggests that the lifetime of contact binaries strongly depends on the mass of the primaries.