Sharp bounds for general commutators on weighted Lebesgue spaces

We show that if an operator T is bounded on weighted Lebesgue space L^2(w) and obeys a linear bound with respect to the A_2 constant of the weight, then its commutator [b,T] with a function b in BMO will obey a quadratic bound with respect to the A_2 constant of the weight. We also prove that the kth-order commutator T^k_b=[b,T^{k-1}_b] will obey a bound that is a power (k+1) of the A_2 constant of the weight. Sharp extrapolation provides corresponding L^p(w) estimates. The results are sharp in terms of the growth of the operator norm with respect to the A_p constant of the weight for all 1<p<\infty, all k, and all dimensions, as examples involving the Riesz transforms, power functions and power weights show.