Fluctuation analysis of rotational decay from excited nuclei

A statistical method to analyze the gamma decay of excited, rapidly rotating nuclei is presented. It is based on the fact that the cooling path of these systems goes through regions of both suppressed and enhanced fluctuations typical of large and low level density, respectively. The method is applied to the study of the high-spin quasicontinuum of ${}_{}{}^{167,168}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Yb}$.