Giant dipole resonance as a quantitative constraint on the symmetry energy

The possible constraints on the poorly determined symmetry part of the effective nuclear Hamiltonians or effective energy functionals, i.e., the so-called symmetry energy S(rho), are very much under debate. In the present work, we show that the value of the symmetry energy associated with Skyrme functionals, at densities rho around 0.1 fm(-3), is strongly correlated with the value of the centroid of the Giant Dipole Resonance (GDR) in spherical nuclei. Consequently, the experimental value of the GDR in, e.g., Pb-208 can be used as a constraint on the symmetry energy, leading to 23.3 MeV < S(rho=0.1 fm(-3)) < 24.9 MeV.