The many facets of giant resonances at high excitation energies

Abstract

We show that from a study of collective motions built on highly excited states we can extract important information on open problems in nuclear structure and dynamics: 1. i)Competition between one- and two-body dissipation, 2. ii) Effects of correlations and related density fluctuations, 3. iii) Transition in the nature of nuclear collective motions: from pure quantum to classical sound waves, 4. iv) Pre-equilibrium effects: the “dynamical” dipole in charge asymmetric entrance channels, 5. v) Fusion hindrance from dynamical instabilities. We try also to discuss the relevance of new, more exclusive, experiments and of a larger systematics.