A Holographic Constraint on Scale Separation
Abstract
We propose a new consistency condition for the compatibility of a gravitational effective field theory in AdS with a dual holographic description in terms of a family of large- CFTs. Using large- factorization of correlation functions combined with a properly defined notion of single- and multi-particle operators, we argue that the cubic scalar bulk couplings for fields dual to operators with extremal arrangements of the conformal dimensions, i.e. , should vanish. We apply this criterion to the 4d effective supergravity theory describing the simplest DGKT AdS vacua in type IIA string theory and show that it is non-trivially satisfied. In addition, we calculate explicitly all non-vanishing three-point correlation functions of low-lying scalar operators in the putative 3d CFTs dual to these AdS string theory backgrounds.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.11031,
title = {A Holographic Constraint on Scale Separation},
author = {Nikolay Bobev and Hynek Paul and Filippo Revello},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.11031},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
6 pages + appendices | v2: minor typos and a small error in eqs. (11)-(12) fixed, published version