  Statistical properties of Fano resonances occurring in photoabsorption to
highly excited atomic or molecular states are derived. The situation with one
open and one closed channel is analyzed when the classical motion of the
excited complex in the closed channel is chaotic. The closed channel subspace
is modeled by random matrix theory. The probability distribution of the Fano
parameter is derived both for the case of time reversal symmetry (TRS) and
broken time reversal symmetry. For the TRS case the area distribution under a
resonance profile relevant for low resolution experiments is discussed in
detail.
