Phase diagram and nucleation in the Polyakov-loop-extended Quark-Meson truncation of QCD with the unquenched Polyakov-loop potential

Unquenching of the Polyakov-loop potential showed to be an important improvement for the description of the phase structure and thermodynamics of strongly-interacting matter at zero quark chemical potentials with Polyakov-loop extended chiral models. This work constitutes the first application of the quark backreaction on the Polyakov-loop potential at nonzero density. The observation is that it links the chiral and deconfinement phase transition also at small temperatures and large quark chemical potentials. The build up of the surface tension in the Polyakov-loop extended Quark-Meson model is explored by investigating the two and 2+1-flavour Quark-Meson model and analysing the impact of the Polyakov-loop extension. In general, the order of magnitude of the surface tension is given by the chiral phase transition. The coupling of the chiral and deconfinement transition with the unquenched Polyakov-loop potential leads to the fact that the Polyakov-loop contributes at all temperatures.Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures; version published in Phys. Rev.

Spectroscopy of higher bottomonia

In this contribution, we discuss our recent unquenched quark model results for the spectrum of $b \bar b$ mesons with self energy corrections, due to the coupling to the meson-meson continuum. Our unquenched quark model predictions for the masses of the recently discovered $\chi_b(3P)$ states are compared to those of a re-fit of Godfrey and Isgur's relativized quark model to the most recent experimental data. The possible importance of continuum effects in the $\chi_b(3P)$ states is discussed. Finally, we show our quark model results for the radiative decays of the $\chi_b(3P)$ system and the open-bottom decays of $b \bar b$ mesons.Comment: Talk given at the conference "Dark Matter, Hadron Physics and Fusion Physics", Messina (Italy), September 24-26, 201

The unquenched quark model

In this contribution, we briefly discuss the results for charmonium and bottomonium spectra with self-energy corrections in the unquenched quark model, due to the coupling to the meson-meson continuum. The UQM formalism can be extended to include also the effects of hybrid mesons, i.e. hybrid loops. Finally, we discuss the results of a calculation of hybrid mesons spectrum in Coulomb Gauge QCD.Comment: Talk given at the conference "Dark Matter, Hadron Physics and Fusion Physics", Messina (Italy), September 24-26, 201