Gamma decay of superdeformed states

I'll start off by reminding you of one of the most striking properties of superdeformed states, namely the way they decay to states of smaller deformation. I'll then try and convince you that the decay can be described using the same terminology in all the different mass regions. In such an approach, the general trends of the decay-out process and the general features of the decay-out spectrum can be explained satisfactorly. However, not everything is understood. This aspect will be the subject of the last part of my talk, where I'll present some recent work concerning the nature of the decay mechanism.