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 or2 - q2 < 0, i.e., the Landau damping, leads to an increase of the pressure for temperatures & GSIM;0.8T & chi;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 T0. 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.