The chiral phase transition in QCD: Critical exponents and their flavour dependence

We discuss the strong flavour dependence of the critical temperature as well as the order of the phase transition found in Monte Carlo simulations of QCD. Analytical and numerical studies of strong coupling QCD show that the lattice U( f) × U( f) symmetry may lead to modifications of the order of the phase transition on the lattice, which in the continuum limit is expected to be controlled by the global SU( n_f) × SU( n_f) chiral symmetry.