The long-standing controversy about the isospin dependence of the effective Dirac mass in ab initio calculations of asymmetric nuclear matter is clarified by solving the relativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock equations in the full Dirac space. The symmetry energy and its slope parameter at the saturation density are $E_{\text{sym}}\left({\rho }_0\right)=33.1$ MeV and $L=65.2$ MeV, in agreement with empirical and experimental values. Further applications predict the neutron star radius $R_{1.4M_{\odot }}\approx 12$ km and the maximum mass of a neutron star $M_{\text{max}}\le 2.4M_{\odot }$.

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• Asymmetric nuclear matter
• Nuclear matter in neutron stars
• Symmetry energy