This manuscript summarises the main activities that I have carried out during the last ten years of research at the Centre d’Études Nucléaires de Bordeaux-Gradignan (CENBG). It is, to a great extent, a synthesis of nine articles. They can be consulted by the reader that would like to have more detailed information. These articles are denoted as Article I, II... all along the manuscript. The manuscript is intended to be accessible to PhD students not familiar with the topic.Chapter 1 recalls some of the basic ideas of statistical mechanics and discusses the applicability of its concepts to nuclei. Some of these concepts, in particular the concept of statistical equilibrium, are essential for the topics covered by chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 summarises the studies performed by the CENBG collaboration on the surrogate-reaction method in the last ten years. Chapter 3 summarises part of the work done on the modelling of nuclear fission in collaboration with Karl-Heinz Schmidt, it considers the partition of excitation energy and unpaired nucleons in fission on the basis of statistical mechanics. Chapters 2 and 3 contain the bulk of my work, each of them has its own introduction and conclusion sections. Chapter 4 presents the medium and long-term experimental perspectives for the topics described in chapters 2 and 3.
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