Conformal boundary conditions for a 4d scalar field

We construct unitary, stable, and interacting conformal boundary conditions for a free massless scalar in four dimensions by coupling it to edge modes living on a boundary. The boundary theories we consider are bosonic and fermionic QED3 with Nf flavors and a Chern-Simons term at level k, in the large-Nf limit with fixed k/Nf. We find that interacting boundary conditions only exist when k ≠ 0. To obtain this result we compute the β functions of the classically marginal couplings at the first non-vanishing order in the large-Nf expansion, and to all orders in k/Nf and in the couplings. To check vacuum stability we also compute the large-Nf effective potential. We compare our results with the the known conformal bootstrap bounds.