Conformal anomalies for (maximal) 6d conformal supergravity

Abstract: We compute the conformal anomalies for 6d (2,0) conformal supergravity by direct calculation in component fields. The main novel results consist of the type-B anomaly coefficients for the gravitino and the 3-form, as well as their explicit quadratic action on some specific backgrounds. We also comment on the graviton contribution, whose Lagrangian is essentially given by the $\mathscr Q$-curvature. We confirm the expectation that, when coupling (2,0) conformal supergravity to 26 copies of the (2,0) tensor multiplet, the resulting theory is free of conformal anomalies. We also consider the conformal anomalies for its (1,0) truncation and confirm their relation with the chiral anomaly polynomial recently derived. For calculating the anomalies, we work with an Einstein on-shell background and make a factorised Ansatz for the operators governing the quadratic fluctuations. This reduces the calculation to evaluating heat-kernel coefficients of standard 2-derivative operators. We fix and check the Ansatz against the explicit evaluation of the component-field supergravity action in some cases.