Higher-derivative gravity and the AdS/CFT correspondence

We investigate the AdS/CFT correspondence for higher-derivative gravity sys tems and develop a formalism in which the generating functional of the boun dary field theory is given as a functional that depends only on the boundar y values of bulk fields. We also derive a Hamilton-Jacobi-like equation tha t uniquely determines the generating functional, and give an algorithm calc ulating the Weyl anomaly. Using the expected duality between a higher-deriv ative gravity system and N = 2 superconformal field theory in four dimensio ns, we demonstrate that the resulting Weyl anomaly is consistent with the f ield theoretic anomaly.