The Holographic Weyl anomaly

TL;DR

This paper computes the Weyl anomaly for conformal field theories via the AdS/CFT correspondence, providing explicit results for dimensions 2, 4, and 6, and confirming known cases while offering new insights for six dimensions.

Contribution

It presents a systematic calculation of the holographic Weyl anomaly in various dimensions, including new results for the six-dimensional (0,2) theory.

Findings

In d=2, the central charge matches known results from asymptotic symmetry.

In d=4, the anomaly agrees with N=4 superconformal SU(N) gauge theory.

In d=6, the anomaly grows as N^3 and vanishes on Ricci-flat backgrounds.

Abstract

We calculate the Weyl anomaly for conformal field theories that can be described via the adS/CFT correspondence. This entails regularizing the gravitational part of the corresponding supergravity action in a manner consistent with general covariance. Up to a constant, the anomaly only depends on the dimension d of the manifold on which the conformal field theory is defined. We present concrete expressions for the anomaly in the physically relevant cases d = 2, 4 and 6. In d = 2 we find for the central charge c = 3 l/ 2 G_N in agreement with considerations based on the asymptotic symmetry algebra of adS_3. In d = 4 the anomaly agrees precisely with that of the corresponding N = 4 superconformal SU(N) gauge theory. The result in d = 6 provides new information for the (0, 2) theory, since its Weyl anomaly has not been computed previously. The anomaly in this case grows as N^3, where N is the number of coincident M5 branes, and it vanishes for a Ricci-flat background.