Explicit formulas for GJMS-operators and \(Q\)-curvatures (Q359545)

The GJMS-operators are conformally covariant powers of the Laplacian, which generalize the Yamabe operator. Together with a closely related family of curvature invariants known as Branson's \(Q\)-curvature, they have received a lot of attention during the last years, both in conformal differential geometry and in analysis. In spite of a relatively simple construction via the Fefferman-Graham ambient metric, it turned out that it is notoriously difficult to find explicit formulae for the higher-order GJMS-operators. This article is part of a big project of the author in which he uses his theory of residue families to obtain recursive formulae for the GJMS-operators. Moreover, based on so-called Poincaré-Einstein metrics (which are closely related to the ambient metric) and the associated renormalized volume, the author introduces a family of second-order operators depending naturally on a Riemannian metric, from which the GJMS-operators can be obtained as linear combinations of iterated compositions. Determining the coefficients for these expressions requires difficult combinatorics. The family of these operators is in a precise way related to the family of all GJMS-operators which then leads to recursive expressions for the latter. The \(Q\)-curvatures can be treated in a similar way. The technical difficulties which have to be overcome to carry out this program are quite formidable. It should be mentioned that a way to deduce the formulae obtained in this article directly from the original construction of the GJMS-operators from the ambient metric has been recently found by \textit{C. Fefferman} and \textit{C. R. Graham} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 26, No. 4, 1191--1207 (2013; Zbl 1276.53042)].