 Heat invariants

For the positive scalar Laplace-Beltrami operator on a compact manifold without boundary, the heat invariants are the integrated coefficients $a_j={\int }_M{u}_j(x,x)d{V}_g$ in the short-time heat kernel expansion. In particular $a_0=\mathrm{Vol}(M)$ and $a_1=\frac{1}{6}{\int }_M{R}_{g}d{V}_g$, with $R_g$ the scalar curvature. They are determined by the heat trace, hence by the spectrum with multiplicities. The leading positive coefficient recovers the dimension from ${\lim }_{t\downarrow 0}\log \mathrm{Tr}(e^{-t\Delta })/\log (1/t)=d/2$.