The singular locus of an almost distance function (Q784829)

The main goal of the paper is to generalize the notion of the cut locus. For this purpose, the author first introduces an~almost distance function on a~Finsler manifold. Such a class contains, among others, Busemann functions and the distance functions. Then it is shown that some properties of the distance functions such as \begin{itemize} \item differentiability of the function under some additional assumptions; \item the measure of the set of critical values of the function; \item geometrical properties of the singular locus \end{itemize} can be also obtained for this wider subclass of functions. Moreover, it is shown that the class of almost distance functions is very rich because the singular locus of an almost distance function can have a~very complicated structure, which never happens for the distance function from a point in a~Riemannian manifold.