Probing the symmetry energy from the nuclear isoscaling

Abstract

Using different parameterizations of the nuclear mass formula, we study the sensitivity of the isoscaling parameters to the mass formula employed in grand-canonical calculations. Previous works on isoscaling have suggested that the symmetry energy implied in such calculations is anomalously smaller than that suggested by fits to nuclear masses. We show that surface corrections to the symmetry energy naturally broadens the isotopic distribution thus allowing for values of the symmetry energy which more closely match those obtained from nuclear masses.