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The QCD Trace Anomaly at Strong Coupling from M-Theory

In this short note we address the issue of obtaining the temperature dependence of the QCD conformal anomaly from a top-down holographic dual consistent with very recent lattice results for both, T<Tc and T>Tc. As the holographic dual, we use the M-theory uplift of the SYZ type IIA mirror obtained in arXiv:1306.4339 at finite gauge/string coupling (as part of the &#39;MQGP&#39; limit) of the type IIB holographic dual of large-N thermal QCD of arXiv:0902.1540. We also show that after a tuning of the (small) Ouyang embedding parameter and radius of a blown-up S^2 when expressed in terms of the horizon radius, a QCD deconfinement temperature Tc = 150 MeV from a Hawking-Page phase transition at vanishing baryon chemical potential, consistent with lattice QCD in the heavy-quark limit, can be obtained.