The space of m-ary differential operators as a module over the Lie algebra of vector fields

Abstract

The space of m-ary differential operators acting on weighted densities is a (m+1)-parameter family of modules over the Lie algebra of vector fields. For almost all the parameters, we construct a canonical isomorphism between this space and the corresponding space of symbols as sl(2)-modules. This yields to the notion of the sl(2)-equivariant symbol calculus for m-ary differential operators. We show, however, that these two modules cannot be isomorphic as sl(2)-modules for some particular values of the parameters. Furthermore, we use the symbol map to show that all modules of second-order m-ary differential operators are isomorphic to each other, except for few modules called singular.