Finite-Temperature Phase Transitions in Lattice QCD for a General Number of Flavors

Finite-temperature transitions in lattice QCD are studied for various numbers of flavors in the range 1≤Nf≤18 on an 8³×{}4 lattice by the Langevin simulation technique. It is found that the weakening of the transition at intermediate quark mass is a general feature for Nf≥2 but that the smoothing out of the transition observed for Nf=2-4 does not occur for large numbers of flavors (Nf≥10). For Nf=1 the transition weakens toward small quark mass mq but remains first order down to mqa=0.05.