Mass number dependence of the Skyrme-force-induced nuclear symmetry energy

The global mass dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy and its two basic ingredients due to the mean-level spacing and effective strength of the isovector mean-potential is studied within the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock model. In particular, our study determines the ratio of the surface-to-volume contributions to the nuclear symmetry energy to be ~1.6 and reveals that contributions due to mean-level spacing and effective strength of the isovector mean-potential are almost equal after removing momentum-dependent effects by rescaling them with isoscalar and isovector effective masses, respectively.