The unquenching of the Polyakov-loop potential has been shown 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 transitions 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 $2+1$-flavor quark-meson model and analyzing 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 transitions with the unquenched Polyakov-loop potential leads to the fact that the Polyakov loop contributes at all temperatures.

• Received 21 January 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.93.094014