A stress tensor for anti-de Sitter gravity

We propose a procedure for computing the boundary stress tensor associated with a gravitating system in asymptotically anti-de Sitter space. Our defin ition is free of ambiguities encountered by previous attempts, and correctl y reproduces the masses and angular momenta of various spacetimes, Via the AdS/CFT correspondence, our classical result is interpretable as the expect ation value of the stress tensor in a quantum conformal field theory. We de monstrate that the conformal anomalies in two and four dimensions are recov ered. The two dimensional stress tensor transforms with a Schwarzian deriva tive and the expected central charge. We also find a nonzero ground state e nergy for global AdS(5), and show that it exactly matches the Casimir energ y of the dual N = 4 super Yang-Mills theory on S-3 x R.