Systematics of Hot Giant Dipole Resonance Parameters

The dependence of the Giant Dipole Resonance (GDR) width on spin and temperature is a much debated subject in the literature. A universal scaling law has been proposed by Kusnezov \it et al.\ \rm [D. Kusnezov \it et al.\ \rm Phys.\ Rev.\ Lett.\ \bf 81\rm, 542 (1998)]\@. Recently, we completed a literature survey of GDR parameters which provided us with a data set about five times as big as the one which was used by Kusnezov {\it et al.} [A. Schiller and M. Thoennessen, At.\ Data Nucl.\ Data Tables \bf 93\rm, 549 (2007)]\@. The Kusnezov scaling law is tested over this larger data set. The data is also broken down into subsets of data with common characteristics such as deformation. We will discuss the limits of applicability of the Kusnezov scaling law.