Stress Tensors and Casimir Energies in the AdS/CFT Correspondence

Abstract

We discuss various approaches to extracting the full stress-energy tensor of the conformal field theory from the corresponding supergravity solutions, within the framework of the Maldacena conjecture. This provides a more refined probe of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We apply these techniques in considering the Casimir energy of the conformal field theory on a torus. It seems that either generically the corresponding supergravity solutions are singular (i.e., involve regions of large string-scale curvatures), or that they are largely insensitive to the boundary conditions of the CFT on the torus.