The structure of the trace anomaly of higher spin conformal currents in the bulk of AdS₄

The two-point function of the conserved traceless spin-$\ell$ currents which are constructed from the scalar field $\sigma(z)$ is evaluated and renormalized by a dimensional regularization procedure. The anomaly is managed to arise only in the trace part. To isolate this trace anomaly it is sufficient to analyze only the maximum singular part of the two-point function and its trace terms to leading order. The corresponding part of the effective action which is quadratic in the trace of the higher spin field is explicitly given. For the spin-2 field which is identical with the gravitational field the results known from the literature are reproduced.