The role of pions as virtual constituents of light bound states

We summarize recent results for the spectrum and properties of light pseudoscalar and scalar hadrons in a functional approach to QCD using Dyson-Schwinger and Bethe-Salpeter equations. We focus in particular on the role of pions as virtual constituents in light mesons ('pion cloud effects') as well as their role as constituents of tetraquark bound states. An extension of our framework into the charm quark sector reveals an all-charm tetraquark in the mass region around 5.5 GeV.