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I was wondering about the following:

Let $M$ be a smooth, second-countable (possibly noncompact) manifold and let $E$ and $F$ be smooth vector bundles over $M$.

  1. Can every smooth linear partial differential operator $P$ from $E$ to $F$ be written as $\sum_{i=0}^n (T_i)_* \circ P_i$ for certain smooth linear partial differential operators $P_0, \dots, P_n$ from $E$ to $E$ and certain vector bundle homomorphisms $T_0, \dots, T_n$ from $E$ to $F$?

  2. Can every smooth linear partial differential operator $P$ from $E$ to $E$ be written as a finite sum of compositions of smooth linear partial differential operators from $E$ to $E$ of order at most 1?

Of course, locally (i.e., on a chart domain over which the vector bundles trivialize) the answer to both questions is yes, but this does not seem to be of much help when trying to answer the questions globally.

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    The problem with using smooth partitions of unity is that you will not get finite sums on noncompact manifolds. (For compact manifolds, I believe that the answer to both questions is positive and that one can prove this by using finite smooth partitions of unity.) Your reference to Ramanan's _Global Calculus_ made me realize that the questions are not formulated precise enough: in both questions $P$ is assumed to be of finite order. Thanks for thinking along!2011-08-03

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