Conformal anomaly for dilaton coupled theories from AdS/CFT correspondence

Trace anomaly for dilaton coupled conformal theories on curved background w ith non-zero dilaton is found from supergravity side as an IR effect using AdS/CFT correspondence. For d = 2 it coincides with the conformal anomaly f or dilaton coupled scalar (up to total derivative term which is known to be ambiguous). In four-dimensional case we get conformal anomaly for N = 4 su per YM theory interacting with conformal supergravity. In the same way the calculation of dilaton dependent conformal anomaly in higher dimensions see ms to be much easier than using standard QFT methods. (C) 1998 Elsevier Sci ence B.V. All rights reserved.