  We study the QCD phase diagram away from the strong coupling limit (SCL) with
fluctuation effects in the auxiliary field Monte-Carlo (AFMC) method. First, we
give an effective action which contains next-to-leading order (NLO) finite
coupling effects of the strong coupling expansion as well as fluctuation
effects. Second, we examine NLO effects of the strong coupling expansion in
AFMC at zero quark density. We find that the chiral condensate is reduced by
both NLO terms from temporal plaquettes and fluctuation effects, and almost no
dependence on NLO terms from spatial plaquettes in the current analysis. These
behaviors can be understood from the modification of the mass and the wave
function renormalization factor by auxiliary fields as in the mean field
analysis and the fluctuation effects in the strong coupling limit.
