The Topology of the AdS/CFT/Randall-Sundrum Complementarity

The background geometries of the AdS/CFT and the Randall-Sundrum theories are locally similar, and there is strong evidence for some kind of “complementarity” between them; yet the global structures of the respective manifolds are very different. We show that this apparent problem can be understood in the context of a more complete global formulation of AdS/CFT. In this picture, the brane-world arises within the AdS/CFT geometry as the inevitable consequence of recent results on the global structure of manifolds with “infinities”. We argue that the usual coordinates give a misleading picture of this global structure, much as Schwarzschild coordinates conceal the global form of Kruskal-Szekeres space.