  The level density of 2+ states in 40Ca has been extracted in the energy
region of the isoscalar giant quadrupole resonance (ISGQR) from a fluctuation
analysis of high energy-resolution p,p') data taken at incident energies of 200
MeV at the K600 magnetic spectrometer of iThemba LABS, South Africa. Quasi-free
scattering cross sections were calculated to estimate their role as a
background contribution to the spectra and found to be small. The shape of the
background was determined from the discrete wavelet transform of the spectra
using a biorthogonal wavelet function normalized at the lowest particle
separation threshold. The experimental results are compared to widely used
phenomenological and microscopic models.
