Holographic origin of $a$-maximization and higher-derivative AdS$_5$/CFT$_4$

Kiril Hristov; Saurish Khandelwal; Yi Pang; Gabriele Tartaglino-Mazzucchelli

doi:10.1103/nrlq-ktd1

paper

Holographic origin of $a$ -maximization and higher-derivative AdS $_{5}$ /CFT $_{4}$

arXiv:2511.22546 · doi:10.1103/nrlq-ktd1

Abstract

We develop a consistent partially off-shell framework for evaluating higher-derivative actions of five-dimensional $N = 1$ gauged supergravity with abelian vector multiplets on AdS $_{5}$ . Using the superconformal formalism, we show that the resulting holographic expression reproduces the trial $a$ -anomaly coefficient of the dual conformal field theory, identifying the supergravity equations of motion with $a$ -maximization. We present an exact correspondence between Chern-Simons couplings and the anomaly polynomial of the boundary theory. We illustrate our proposal by applying it to all known two- and four-derivative actions, including the ``off-diagonal'' invariants never before considered in the gauged supergravity literature. Finally, we argue that all invariants beyond four-derivative yield no genuinely new contributions to asymptotically AdS $_{5}$ BPS backgrounds, but instead reduce to linear combinations of the established two- and four-derivative actions.

arXiv comment5 pages + appendices and references;

Holographic origin of a-maximization and higher-derivative AdS5​/CFT4​

Abstract

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Holographic origin of $a$ -maximization and higher-derivative AdS $_{5}$ /CFT $_{4}$