Holography for the trace anomaly action

A recently proposed effective action for the trace anomaly describes a tensor-scalar theory that is weakly coupled up to a certain high energy scale, where it becomes strongly interacting. Its ultraviolet completion is obtained by coupling to gravity a quantum field theory in which conformal invariance is spontaneously broken. In this paper, we show that if the field theory that gives rise to the trace anomaly is a large Nc conformal field theory, then the trace anomaly action has a completion above the strong scale in a holographic Randall-Sundrum two-brane theory, with the radion as a low energy remnant of the spontaneously broken conformal symmetry. Furthermore, we note that the subleading Nc terms can be derived by adding localized fields to the UV brane, so that the theory remains weakly coupled. The subleading terms are also obtained by introducing the Weyl squared terms in the 5D bulk. These, however, exhibit strongly coupled behavior at the respective sub-Planckian energy scales.