Quantum cosmology from N=4 super Yang-Mills theory

We consider quantum N = 4 super Yang-Mills theory interacting in a covariant way with N = 4 conformal supergravity. The induced large N effective action for such a theory is calculated on a non-supersymmetric dilaton-gravitational background using the conformal anomaly found via AdS/CFT correspondence. Considering such an effective action as a quantum correction to the classical gravity action we study quantum cosmology. In particular, the effect from dilaton to the scale factor (which without dilaton corresponds to the inflationary universe) is investigated. It is shown that, dependent on the initial conditions for the dilaton, the dilaton may slow down, or accelerate, the inflation process. At late times, the dilaton is decaying exponentially. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.