On the origin of Higher Schwarzians

In this paper, we analyze higher Schwarzians and show that they are closely related to the nonlinear realization of the Virasoro algebra. The Goldstone fields of such a realization provide a new set of SL(2,R) invariant higher Schwarzians that are deeply related to the Aharonov,Tamanoi and Bonora-Matone ones. A minor change of the coset space parametrization leads to a new set of SL(2,R) non-invariant higher Schwarzians now related to the Schippers and Bertilsson Schwarzians.