No label defined (Q4941253)

The authors discuss certain global questions on Finsler surfaces, and they obtain some very interesting results on the geometry of Finsler surfaces. The second section is devoted to Minkowski planes. One derives an elegant ODE which describes the indicatrix. In Section 3, the authors write out the explicit formulas for a preferred moving frame and its coframe. These are globally defined on the sphere bundle \(SM\) of a surface \(M\), and are orthonormal with respect to the Sasaki metric. In the fourth section they use the moving frames to introduce Chern's connection, Cartan's scalar \(I\), Landsberg's scalar \(J\) and Gauss' curvature \(K\). The three scalars \(I, J, K\) a priori live on the sphere bundle \(SM\) of \(M\) [see \textit{M. Matsumoto}, Contemp. Math. 196, 79-82 (1996; Zbl 0874.53017)]. Section 5 is concerned with the indicatrices of Landsberg surfaces, and a short proof of Szabo's theorem on connected Berwald surfaces is given. In Sections 7-8, the authors give some rigidity results for Landsberg surfaces with direction independent Gaussian curvature \(K=K(x)\). The main theorem is proved in the last section: Theorem. Let \((M,F)\) be a compact, connected Finsler surface without boundary with \(F\) globally defined on \(TM\). Suppose that \(F\) is of Landsberg type, or its Gaussian curvature \(K\) has no \(y\)-dependence and \(K\leq 0\). Then \((M,F)\) is either Riemannian everywhere if \(K\) is not identically zero, or locally Minkowskian everywhere if \(K\) vanishes identically.