Initiated by by increasing indications of the breaking of axial symmetry seen in the spectroscopy of heavy nuclei the question arose, if the interpretation of other experimental observables will be influenced. To define the collective enhancement of level densities above the Fermi gas prediction the nuclear deformation plays an important role. The talk will demonstrate respective considerations with respect to recent experiments.
The second subject to be covered relates to the seminal experiments performed at Saclay on the study of IVGDR's by quasi-monochromatic photons via neutron emission. Both of the important results from the anlysis of these data, the spreading width and the agreement to the TRK sum rule, are influenced by the underlying assumption on the nuclear shape. This point will be discussed together with theoretical work on these topics. Finally, a combination of the new level density formalism to the IVGDR-tail will be shown to allow a prediction of Maxwellian averaged neutron capture of interest for nuclear astrophysics.
