Effect of mesonic off-shell correlations in the PNJL equation of state

Abstract: We study the meson contribution to the equation of state of the 2-flavor PNJL model, including the full momentum dependence of the meson polarization loops. Within the Beth-Uhlenbeck approach, we demonstrate that the contribution from the quark-antiquark continuum excitations in the spacelike region $\omega^2 - q^2 < 0$, i.e. the Landau damping, leads to an increase of the pressure for temperatures $\gtrsim 0.8\,T_c^\chi$ and a significant meson momentum cut-off dependence in the mesonic pressure and the QCD trace anomaly. We investigate the dependence of the results on the choice of the Polyakov-loop potential parameter $T_0$. From the dependence of the mesonic pressure on the current quark mass, by means of the Feynman-Hellmann theorem, we evaluate the contribution of the pion quasiparticle gas and Landau damping to the chiral condensate.