Volume forms for time orientable Finsler spacetimes (Q501300)

The author provides an extension of the notions of Busemann-Hausdorff and Holmes-Thompson volume to time-orientable Finslerian spacetime manifolds. These notions are designed to make sense in the case when the Lorentz-Finsler metric tensor is either not defined or degenerate along some directions in each tangent space. The idea is to look for a positive definite Riemannian metric tensor to be canonically attached to the given Lorentz-Finsler metric. The closed unit balls of this Riemannian metric are compact and can then be used, instead of the Finslerian non-compact unit balls, in Busemann-Hausdorff and Holmes-Thompson-type constructions. The author ends the paper by three examples: a smooth metric obtained as a linearized Finslerian perturbation of the Minkowski metric \(\text{diag}(1,-1,-1,-1)\) of \(\mathbb{R}^4\), a non-smooth Berwald-Moor metric for which it is still possible to define volume forms, and a Bogoslovsky-type metric for which one can only determine the minimal Riemannian volume form.