Rigidity of noncompact Finsler manifolds (Q1580278)

The authors show that for Euclidean or Minkowski spaces, perturbing the metric on a compact subset does not change the isometry class of the metric, provided that certain hypotheses are satisfied. These hypotheses take the form of curvature conditions, or the absence of conjugate points. A ubiquitous curvature condition adopted by the authors is the vanishing of the so-called mean tangent curvature. This curvature measures the change of the Minkowski model from one tangent space to another, and is expected to play a significant role in rigidity issues on Finsler manifolds.