Conformal Anomalies and Generalised Energy Conservation in De Sitter Spacetime

Abstract: We show that for bulk discrete series fields whose dual operators have integer conformal dimensions, the Generalised Energy Conservation (GEC) condition for de Sitter (dS) scattering amplitudes defined in even-dimensional extended Poincaré spacetime corresponds precisely to the absence of boundary conformal anomalies, including beta-function contributions, at the level of tree-level contact interactions. In contrast, holographic consistency in AdS/CFT enforces only the locality of the conformal anomaly. We find novel, unique four-point interactions involving three identical conformally coupled scalars and one discrete series scalar by performing both GEC and holographic bootstraps. This demonstrates that the solutions to GEC form a measure-zero subset of the holographically consistent solutions. Our holographic analysis agrees precisely with the expected renormalisation conditions for conformal field theory correlators. In addition, the constraint for a particular four-point configuration may be relevant for testing holographic consistency of scale-separated non-supersymmetric AdS$_4$ vacua.