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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2017
External irradiation can completely alter the internal structure of the secondary in a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB). For radiation fluxes as are typically found in LMXBs, the secondary expands by a factor of 2 to 3 in order to relax towards a new state of thermal equilibrium. This relaxation process provides a new mass-transfer driving mechanism for LMXBs, which can drastically alter the evolution of these systems.