A Construction of Critical GJMS Operators Using Wodzicki's Residue

For an even dimensional, compact, conformal manifold without boundary we construct a conformally invariant differential operator of order the dimension of the manifold. In the conformally flat case, this operator coincides with the critical GJMS operator of Graham-Jenne-Mason-Sparling. We use the Wodzicki residue of a pseudo-differential operator of order −2, originally defined by A. Connes, acting on middle dimension forms.