Unquenching the Quark Model

We present the formalism for a new generation of unquenched quark models in which quark-antiquark pair effects are taken into account in an explicit form via a microscopic QCD-inspired quark-antiquark creation mechanism. No truncation in the sum over all the big tower of states is necessary since these states are automatically generated by means of powerful group-theoretical techniques. An important check on the formalism and the numerical results is provided by the closure limit. As an application, the effect of quark-antiquark pairs on the strange content of the proton spin, $\Delta s$, is discussed. The contributions of the up and down quarks, $\Delta u$ and $\Delta d$, are also calculated. This has become possible after solving the difficult problem of permutational symmetry related to quark rearrangements. Finally, we present some preliminary results in the closure limit as well as an outlook for future applications.