A new approach for calculating nuclear symmetry energy
  By using the functional path integral method, we obtain a model-independent formula for nuclear symmetry energy, which explicitly shows the relation between nuclear symmetry energy and isospin susceptibility. The latter one is found to be a probe to the QCD chiral phase transition. We further found that, the nuclear symmetry energy has an abrupt change at the critical nuclear density where the chiral symmetry restores partially, which could be detected from the experiments. 
Yong-Hui Xia, Chang Xu, Hong-Shi Zong
nucl-th