Inelastic α-particles scattering at energies of a few hundred MeV and very-forward scattering angles including 0^◦ has been established as a best tool for the study of the isoscalar giant monopole (IS0) strength distributions in nuclei. The present study describes a systematic investigation of the ISGMR in nuclei ranging from medium to heavy mass across the periodic table.

IS0 strength distributions for ⁵⁸Ni, ⁹⁰Zr, ¹²⁰Sn and ²⁰⁸Pb are extracted and compared to previously published results from experiments with a lower energy resolution. While the structural character of the IS0 strength distributions vary, a reasonable agreement is obtained between the different studies. For the fine structure analysis, all models highlight the role of Landau fragmentation for the damping of the ISGMR especially in the medium-mass region, while the coupling strength between one particle-one hole (1p-1h) and two particle-two hole (2p-2h) correlated and non-correlated configurations becomes more pronounced in the heavy-mass region indicating the importance of the spreading width.