Residue families, singular Yamabe problems and extrinsic conformal Laplacians (Q2089047)

In this 158 pages long paper the authors discuss (approximate) solutions to the singular Yamabe problem, Q-curvature (introduced by Gover and Waldron) and related topics. A collection of the major results can be found in the introduction. The singular Yamabe problem is restated in the form \[ \mathcal{S}(g,\sigma) := |d\sigma|^2_g+2\sigma\frac{-\Delta_g(\sigma)+\sigma J}{n+1} \stackrel{!}{=} 1 \] where \(J\) is the trace of the Schouten curvature tensor of \(g\). The authors typically require a weaker condition, \[ \mathcal{S}(g,\sigma)=1+\sigma^{n+1}R_{n+1},\tag{\(\mathcal{SY}\)} \] where \(R_{n+1}\) is a smooth remainder term. The singular Yamabe problem is discussed in Section 3. It is proven that if \(\sigma\) is an \emph{approximate} solution to the singular Yamabe problem, i.e., (\(\mathcal{SY}\)), then the residue families (with adapted coordinates) can be identified with compositions of Laplace-Robin operators (composed with the restriction operator); this result can be found in Section 8 (Theorem 8.1) of the paper. This allows the authors to rephrase extrinsic conformal Laplacians (Section 9) and extrinsic Q-curvature in terms of residue families (Section 10). There is also a relation to the scattering operator of a certain hyperbolic metric and links to the work by \textit{C. R. Graham} and \textit{M. Zworski} [Invent. Math. 152, No. 1, 89--118 (2003; Zbl 1030.58022)]. A new formula for the singular Yamabe obstruction is also obtained (Theorem 6/6.6). The obstruction is also related to the supercritical Q-curvature (cf. Section 10). Following the main body of the text in Sections 1 to 12, Section 13 collects many computations and minor results. The reader will benefit from the index at the end of the paper, summarizing the most important notation.