PRIMARY MASS AND SEMIMAJOR AXIS DISTRIBUTIONS OF SUBGIANT CLOSE BINARY-SYSTEMS

The primary mass and semimajor axis distributions of semidetached and detached close binary systems with subgiants that have passwd through the ''role exchange'' phase are derived and corrected for observational incompleteness. They are compared with the corresponding distributions for close binary systems with both components on the main sequence. It is found that in semidetached systems most of the mass lost by the initially more massive component leaves the system during the ''role exchange'' phase. A considerable fraction of the angular momentum is also lost, this fraction is greater for low mass systems.