  We study the photon-to-meson transition form factors (TFFs) F_{M \gamma}(Q^2)
for gamma gamma^* \to M using light-front holographic methods. The Chern-Simons
action, which is a natural form in 5-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) space,
leads directly to an expression for the photon-to-pion TFF for a class of
confining models. Remarkably, the predicted pion TFF is identical to the
leading order QCD result where the distribution amplitude has asymptotic form.
The Chern-Simons form is local in AdS space and is thus somewhat limited in its
predictability. It only retains the q \bar q component of the pion
wavefunction, and further, it projects out only the asymptotic form of the
meson distribution amplitude. It is found that in order to describe
simultaneously the decay process \pi^0 \rightarrow gamma gamma and the pion TFF
at the asymptotic limit, a probability for the q \bar q component of the pion
wavefunction P_{q \bar q}=0.5 is required; thus giving indication that the
contributions from higher Fock states in the pion light-front wavefunction need
to be included in the analysis. The probability for the Fock state containing
four quarks (anti-quarks) which follows from analyzing the hadron matrix
elements, P_{q \bar q q \bar q} \sim 10 %, agrees with the analysis of the pion
elastic form factor using light-front holography including higher Fock
components in the pion wavefunction. The results for the TFFs for the eta and
eta^\prime mesons are also presented. The rapid growth of the pion TFF
exhibited by the BaBar data at high Q^2 is not compatible with the models
discussed in this article, whereas the theoretical calculations are in
agreement with the experimental data for the eta and eta^\prime TFFs.
