Microlocal analysis and interacting quantum field theories: Renormalization on physical backgrounds

We present a perturbative construction of interacting quantum field theories on any smooth globally hyperbolic manifold. We develop a purely local version of the Stueckelberg-Bogoliubov-Epstein-Glaser method of renormalization using techniques from microlocal analysis. As byproducts, we describe a perturbative construction of local algebras of observables, present a new definition of Wick polynomials as operator-valued distributions on a natural domain, and we find a general method for the extension of distributions which were defined on the complement of some surfaces