ar X iv : n uc l - th / 9 80 90 17 v 1 7 S ep 1 99 8 Nuclear Transport at Small Excitations : Thermal and Quantal Aspects ∗

The application of the locally harmonic approximation to large scale collective motion is briefly reviewed. Particular emphasis is paid to issues which might be useful in the more general context, or which are specific to our treatment, like there are: Self-consistency between collective and intrinsic motion, a T dependent coupling constant, the inclusion of quantum effects for the dynamics of fluctuations. Finally, open problems are addressed, like the use of thermodynamic concepts at smaller excitations, the ergodic-ity question, the variation of transport coefficients with the nuclear shape due to shell structure, the limits of the LHA at smaller T .