Let be the state associated with a scalar conformal primary operator of scaling dimension . In radial quantization,
and . The norm of a level-one conformal descendant is
Unitarity first gives . If , every is null, so the local operator is translation invariant and belongs to the identity conformal family. Excluding the identity therefore gives .
Now consider the scalar level-two descendant . The conformal algebra and the scalar-primary conditions give
Applying the second and summing over yields
Positivity of this norm, together with , proves the scalar conformal unitarity bound
At equality the level-two descendant is null; in position space this is the free scalar equation of motion.