“…Our principal motivation in studying this problem stems from our general interest in operator-valued Herglotz functions (cf. [12], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [44], [85]) and its possible applications in the areas of inverse spectral theory and completely integrable systems. More precisely, using higher-order expansions of the type (1.1), one can prove trace formulas for Q(x) and certain higher-order differential polynomials in Q(x), following an approach pioneered in [42] (see also [35], [36]).…”