On the Chemical Potential of Dark Energy

It is widely assumed that the observed universe is accelerating due to the existence of a new fluid component called dark energy. In this article, the thermodynamics consequences of a nonzero chemical potential on the dark energy component is discussed with special emphasis to the phantom fluid case. It is found that if the dark energy fluid is endowed with a negative chemical potential, the phantom field hypothesis becomes thermodynamically consistent with no need of negative temperatures as recently assumed in the literature.