A class of Finsler metrics of scalar flag curvature (Q2348097)

One of the most important problems in Finsler geometry is to characterize Finsler metrics of scalar flag curvature. In the Riemannian case, a Riemannian metric on \(M\), \(\dim M\geq 3\), is locally projectively flat if and only if it is of scalar flag curvature. In the Finsler case, this result is true in only one direction: Any locally projectively flat Finsler metric is of scalar flag curvature (Berwald). In this paper, the author proves that the other direction is also true for a certain class of Finsler metrics, namely, the class of spherically symmetric Finsler metrics on open balls of \(\mathbb R^n\). A Finsler metric \(F\) on an open ball \(B^n(\delta)\subset\mathbb R^n\) is said to be spherically symmetric if it satisfies \(F(Ax, Ay) =F(x, y)\) for all \(x\in B^n(\delta), y\in T_xB^n(\delta)\) and \(A\in O(n)\). It can be expressed locally in the form: \[ F(x,y)=| y| \phi(| x| ,<x,y>/| y| ), \,\, (x,y)\in T_x B^n(\delta)-\{0\}, \] where \(\phi(r, s)\) is a smooth function defined on \((0,\delta)\times \mathbb R\). The author proves that a spherically symmetric metric on \(B^n(\delta)\) is locally projectively flat if and only if it is of scalar flag curvature. Moreover, he gives a class of nontrivial examples of such metrics.