The missing top of AdS resonance structure

Abstract

We study a massless scalar field in AdS_{d+1} with a nonlinear coupling \phi^N and not limited to spherical symmetry. The free-field-eigenstate spectrum is strongly resonant, and it is commonly believed that the nonlinear coupling leads to energy transfer between eigenstates. We prove that when $Nd$ is even, the most efficient resonant channels to transfer energy are always absent. In particular, for N=3 this means no energy transfer at all. For N=4, this effectively kills half of the channels, leading to the same set of extra conservation laws recently derived for gravitational interactions within spherical symmetry.