Extracting the width of giant resonances from the analysis of heavy ion inelastic scattering

The energy and percentage of the energy-weighted sum rule associated with low-lying collective modes and with the giant resonances, are input parameters of the coherent surface excitation model of heavy ion reactions of Broglia, Dasso and Winther. In the present letter we study how the magnitude of structures in the energy spectra associated with the excitation of giant resonances depend on the spreading widths of these modes.