  The damping rate of hot giant dipole resonances (GDR) is investigated.
Besides Landau damping we consider collisions and density fluctuations as
contributions to the damping of GDR. Within the nonequilibrium Green's function
method we derive a non-Markovian kinetic equation. The linearization of the
latter one leads to complex dispersion relations. The complex solution provides
the centroid energy and the damping width of giant resonances. The experimental
damping widths are the full width half maximum (FWHM) and can be reproduced by
the full width of the structure function. Within simple finite size scaling we
give a relation between the minimal interaction strength which is required for
a collective oscillation and the clustersize. We investigate the damping of
giant dipole resonances within a Skyrme type of interaction. Different
collision integrals are compared with each other in order to incorporate
correlations. The inclusion of a conserving relaxation time approximation
allows to find the $T^2$-dependence of the damping rate with a temperature
known from the Fermi-liquid theory. However, memory effects turn out to be
essential for a proper treatment of the damping of collective modes. We derive
a Landau like formula for the one--particle relaxation time similar to the
damping of zero sound.
