No label defined (Q4788034)

It is well known that pairwise distances between four points on the Euclidean plane vanish the so-called Cayley--Menger determinant. This observation is a cornerstone of the theory of physical structures that, instead of metrics, studies arbitrary functions \(f\) satisfying some initially unknown functional equation (the \(f\) are called metric functions). G.~G.~Mikhajlichenko found all possible metric functions on \(\mathbb R^2\). For example, \(\mathbb R^2\) equipped with the following metric function \[ f((x^1,x^2),(y^1,y^2))= [(x^1-y^1)^2+(x^2-y^2)^2]\exp \biggl( 2\gamma \arctan \frac{x^2-y^2}{x^1-y^1}\biggr) \] is called the Helmholtz plane (\(\gamma>0\)). A 2-manifold \(M\) is said to be a Helmholtz 2-dimensional space if every tangent plane of \(M\) is equipped with a metric function. V.~A.~Kyrov finds metric functions of Helmholtz 2-dimensional spaces and their motion groups; introduces the notion of the quasimetric tensor which is similar to that of the metric tensor in Riemannian spaces; proves that there exists a unique zero-torsion quasimetric connection; studies properties of the curvature tensor for Helmholtz spaces; introduces the notion of the sectional Helmholtz curvature and proves that the curvature is constant if and only if the space is locally flat, moreover, in this case, he proves that the constant equals zero.