We present a holographic formula relating functional determinants: the
fermion determinant in the one-loop effective action of bulk spinors in an
asymptotically locally AdS background, and the determinant of the two-point
function of the dual operator at the conformal boundary. The formula originates
from AdS/CFT heuristics that map a quantum contribution in the bulk partition
function to a subleading large-N contribution in the boundary partition
function. We use this holographic picture to address questions in spectral
theory and conformal geometry. As an instance, we compute the type-A Weyl
anomaly and the determinant of the iterated Dirac operator on round spheres,
express the latter in terms of Barnes' multiple gamma function and gain insight
into a conjecture by B\"ar and Schopka.Comment: 11 pages; new comments and references added, typos correcte
