Q-Curvature, Spectral Invariants, and Representation Theory

Abstract

We give an introductory account of functional determinants of elliptic operators on manifolds and Polyakov-type formulas for their infinitesimal and finite conformal variations. We relate this to extremal problems and to the Q-curvature on even-dimensional conformal manifolds. The exposition is self-contained, in the sense of giving references sufficient to allow the reader to work through all details.

This is a contribution to the Proceedings of the 2007 Midwest Geometry Conference in honor of Thomas P. Branson, published in SIGMA (Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications) at http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA/

References in corpus (1)

• A Quartic Conformally Covariant Differential Operator for Arbitrary Pseudo-Riemannian Manifolds (Summary)

Cited by in corpus (1)

• The Research of Thomas P. Branson