We show that the Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis thermodynamic potential of dynamical quark models with a quark propagator represented by complex conjugate mass poles inevitably exhibits thermodynamic instabilities. We find that the minimal coupling of the quark sector to a Polyakov loop potential can strongly suppress but not completely remove such instabilities. This general effect is explicitly demonstrated in the framework of a covariant, chirally symmetric, effective quark model.

• Received 18 July 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.86.074002