Holographic Normal Ordering and Multi-particle States in the AdS/CFT Correspondence

The general correlator of composite operators of N=4 supersymmetric gauge field theory is divergent. We introduce a means for renormalizing these correlators by adding a boundary theory on the AdS space correcting for the divergences. Such renormalizations are not equivalent to the standard normal ordering of current algebras in two dimensions. The correlators contain contact terms that contribute to the OPE; we relate them diagrammatically to correlation functions of compound composite operators dual to multi-particle states.