Suppression of isoscalar pairing

The short-range nuclear attraction is stronger in the isoscalar channel than in the isovector channel, as evidenced by the existence of the deuteron and not the dineutron. Nevertheless, apart from light N=Z nuclei, pairing is only seen in the isovector channel. This is explained by the effect of the strong spin-orbit splitting on the single-particle energies. A semiquantitative argument is presented treating the high-j orbitals at the Fermi surface as plane waves on a two-dimensional sheet.