Maximum principle for semi-elliptic trace operators and geometric applications

Based on ideas of L. Al\'ias, D. Impera and M. Rigoli developed in "Hypersurfaces of constant higher order mean curvature in warped products", we develope a fairly general weak/Omori-Yau maximum principle for trace operators. We apply this version of maximum principle to generalize several higher order mean curvature estimates and to give an extension of Alias-Impera-Rigoli Slice Theorem