Entry region studies by means of sumspectrometer and multiplicity techniques

General trends in the decays preceeding the yrast individually observable transitions are discussed. The basic parameters in the search for trends in the GAMMA-decay pattern after population of the final nucleus in a heavy ion-induced compound reaction are the excitation energy and angular momentum. The experimental possibility of both determining these parameters for the entry region in the final nuclei and also selecting specific regions of the entry population for studying the decays in more detail is provided by use of a sum spectrometer combined with other detectors. The technique of extracting moments of GAMMA-ray multiplicity distributions from multicounter arrays is summarized. This technique is illustrated for spectra from the reaction 50Ti + 50Ti→100Ru at 192 MeV. 10 figures, 1 table