Boundary operators associated to the sixth-order GJMS operator

Abstract: We describe a set of conformally covariant boundary operators associated to the sixth-order GJMS operator on a conformally invariant class of manifolds which includes compactifications of Poincar\'e--Einstein manifolds. This yields a conformally covariant energy functional for the sixth-order GJMS operator on such manifolds. Our boundary operators also provide a new realization of the fractional GJMS operators of order one, three, and five as generalized Dirichlet-to-Neumann operators. This allows us to prove some sharp Sobolev trace inequalities involving the interior $W^{3,2}$-seminorm, including an analogue of the Lebedev--Milin inequality on six-dimensional manifolds.