Decay mechanisms in bound state interaction kernels

We present progress on the study of decay-channel effects in the properties of hadrons using covariant Bethe-Salpeter equations (BSEs). The main goal will be to develop BSE kernels that contain explicit decay mechanisms. This will be first explored in the meson sector where, for example, a kernel suitable to study the rho meson should contain a virtual $\rho \rightarrow \pi + \pi$ decay mechanism. This will be tackled by including explicit pion degrees of freedom in addition to quarks and gluons.