Riemannian manifolds whose holonomy group lies inside the exceptional Lie group G_2 are called G_2-manifolds. These manifolds have several interesting properties (they are Ricci-flat) and are of interest in geometric analysis as well as in mathematical physics and other fields. In this seminar, we will give an introduction to the theory of G_2-manifolds and discuss an associated non-linear Laplacian-type operator whose kernel essentially determines whether a compact manifold is G_2. We will present uniqueness and existence results for the Poisson’s equation of this operator on homogeneous and cohomogeneity-one manifolds.