On conics in Minkowski planes (Q2839811)

There are various definitions of ellipses (or hyperbolas or parabolas) in the Euclidean plane which are equivalent to each other. Such equivalences do not longer hold if, instead of the usual Euclidean distance, the distance induced by an arbitrary norm is considered, cf. [\textit{Á. G. Horváth} and \textit{H. Martini}, Extr. Math. 26, No. 1, 29--43 (2011; Zbl 1266.46011)]. The best studied Minkowskian analogues of conics are the metrical ones. Let \(M^2\) be a Minkowski plane, i.e., a two-dimensional vector space equipped with a norm \(\|\cdot\|\), \(a, b\in M^2\), and \(\lambda\in \mathbb{R}^+\) with \(2\lambda>\|a-b\|\). Then the set \(\{x\in M^2: \|x-a\|+\|x-b\|=2\lambda\}\) is called a metric ellipse. This set is a centrally symmetric, closed curve [\textit{S.-L. Wu}, \textit{D.-H. Ji} and \textit{A. Javier}, Extr. Math. 20, No. 3, 273--280 (2005; Zbl 1119.52002)]. In the paper under review, various interesting properties of metrically defined conics are given. For instance, metrically defined ellipses are smooth if and only if the corresponding unit ball is smooth.