Type-A Conformal Anomalies from Euler Descent

Abstract: We show that the type-A conformal anomaly in $2n$ dimensions follows from standard Stora-Zumino descent, starting from the Euler invariant polynomial for the Euclidean conformal group $SO(2n+1,1)$ in $6d$, thereby placing type-A anomalies on the same footing as ordinary perturbative t Hooft anomalies. We discuss implications for anomaly inflow, and t Hooft anomaly matching for the full conformal group with a Wess-Zumino-Witten term. In 4d, this enables the construction of a dilaton effective action matching the full type-A $SO(5,1)$ conformal anomaly.