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

We study the meson contribution to the equation of state of the 2-flavor Polyakov-loop Nambu–Jona-Lasinio 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 ω^2 − q^2 < 0, i.e., the Landau damping, leads to an increase of the pressure for temperatures ≳0.8T^χ_c and a significant meson momentum cutoff 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.