Giant resonances and intermediate energy heavy ions electromagnetic decay experiments

We briefly explore how large cross sections for excitation of both isoscalar and isovector giant multipole resonances which can be obtained using intermediate energy heavy-ion reactions can be utilized in photon-decay coincidence experiments to provide new information on subjects ranging from basic nuclear structure properties to resonance damping and pre-compound decay. We also discuss experiments in which photon-decay techniques are used as a tag to isolate and identify very weakly excited modes, enabling us to explore such diverse subjects as hadronic excitation of the giant dipole resonance, the distribution of isovector quadrupole strength in 208Pb, and the excitation of two-phonon giant resonance strength. (orig.)