1

I have recently heard the following statement:

A negative chemical potential means absence of particles.

However, I cannot make this consistent with e.g. a system of free bosons for which $\mu$ must be negative to ensure stability of the partition function.

Qmechanic
  • 220,844
S-low
  • 314

1 Answers1

1

Let me recapitulate to answer my own question

  1. A system of boson requires $\mu\leq 0$ to ensure stability of the theory.
  2. $\mu\leq 0$ means that the system is happy to accept new particles Ref. This is sort of intuitive for a system of bosons
  3. At $T=0$ the Bose distribution function vanishes. This means that \begin{equation} \mu\leq0 \rightarrow n_\text{B}(T=0,\epsilon)=0 \end{equation} which ultimately means absence of particles.
S-low
  • 314