Higher-Order Trace Formulas for Contractive and Dissipative Operators

We establish higher order trace formulas for pairs of contractions along a multiplicative path generated by a self-adjoint operator in a Schatten-von Neumann ideal, removing earlier stringent restrictions on the kernel and defect operator of the contractions. We also derive higher order trace formulas for maximal dissipative operators under relaxed assumptions and new simplified trace formulas for unitary and resolvent comparable self-adjoint operators. The respective spectral shift measures are absolutely continuous and, in the case of contractions, the class of admissible functions includes functions whose higher order derivatives belong to the Wiener class. Both aforementioned properties are new in the mentioned generality.