STATISTICAL AND DIRECT DECAY OF HIGH-LYING SINGLE-PARTICLE EXCITATIONS

Transfer reactions induced by hadronic probes at intermediate energies have revealed a rich spectrum of high-lying excitations embedded in t he nuclear continuum. The investigation of their decay properties is b elieved to be a severe test of their microscopic structure as predicte d by microscopic nuclear models. In addition the degree of damping of these simples modes in the nuclear continuum can be obtained by means of the measured particle (n,p) decay branching ratios. We report here on the-neutron and proton decay studies of high-lying single-particle states in heavy nuclei.