Covariant perturbation theory and the Randall-Sundrum picture

The effective action for quantum fields on a $d$-dimensional spacetime can be computed using a non local expansion in powers of the curvature. We show explicitly that, for conformal fields and up to quadratic order in the curvature, the non local effective action is equivalent to the $d+1$ action for classical gravity in $AdS_{d+1}$ restricted to a $d-1$-brane. This generalizes previous results about quantum corrections to the Newtonian potential and provides an alternative method for making local a non-local effective action. The equivalence can be easily understood by comparing the Kallen-Lehmann decomposition of the classical propagator with the spectral representation of the non local form factors in the quantum effective action.