1. Introduction
In Finsler geometry, there exist several significant non-Riemannian geometric quantities, such as curvature (i.e., Berwald curvature), -curvature, stretch -curvature, Cartan torsion, stretch curvature and the Landsberg curvature etc., all of these quantities vanish for Riemannian manifolds. One of the fundamental problems in Finsler geometry is studying Finsler manifolds with special curvature properties. Therefore, these quantities mentioned above merit extra attention.
Let
be a Finsler manifold. The third-order derivatives of
is called the Cartan torsion. The Cartan torsion provides a quantitative measure of the deviation of a Finsler metric from a Riemannian metric on a manifold [
1]. The rate of change in the Cartan torsion along Finslerian geodesics is called the Landsberg curvature [
2]. In 1926, Berwald [
3] defined the concept of stretch curvature as a natural extension of the Landsberg curvature.
In 1927, Berwald [
4,
5] first defined
curvature, whose curvature coefficients are third-order differentials of the geodesic coefficients induced by the Finsler metric. Shen [
6] introduced another non-Riemannian quantity from the
curvature through horizontal covariant derivative along Finslerian geodesics, which is called
-curvature. Abbas and Kozma [
7] defined a new non-Riemannian geometric quantity called the stretch
-curvature using the
-curvature, with the relationship between the two being analogous to that between the Landsberg curvature and the stretch curvature. A Finsler manifold is said to be
-stretch manifold if its stretch
-curvature vanishes. Recently, Abbas and Kozma [
8] proved that every generalized Douglas manifold with vanishing stretch
-curvature is a Douglas manifold under the condition that the mean Berwald curvature is horizontally constant along geodesics of
F.
The trace of
curvature is called
curvature (i.e., mean Berwald curvature) [
6]. Akbar-Zadeh [
9,
10] originally defined
curvature as a horizontal covariant derivative of
curvature along geodesics, and revealed the connection between
curvature and the flag curvature.
curvature is a positively homogeneous scalar function of degree zero on the slit tangent bundle [
11]. Abbas and Kozma got the non-Riemannian quantity, which is called stretch
-curvature by taking a trace of stretch
-curvature. A Finsler manifold is said to be
-stretch manifold if its stretch
-curvature vanishes. In 2023, Abbas and Kozma [
8] showed that if a Finsler manifold is a Douglas Finsler manifold, then the Finsler metric
F is an
-stretch metric if and only if it is a
-metric.
The Minkowskian product plays a key role in constructing Finsler manifolds that possess special curvature properties in Finsler geometry. In 1982, Okada [
12] not only first introduced the concept of the Minkowskian product of Finsler manifolds but also successfully determined their geodesics. In 2023, He, Li, et al. [
13] proved that a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold is a Berwald (resp. weakly Berwald, Landsberg, or weakly Landsberg) manifold if and only if the component manifolds of it are both Berwald (resp. weakly Berwald, Landsberg, weakly Landsberg) manifolds; thus, they gave a new way to construct the special Finsler manifolds mentioned above. Later, Li, He, et al. [
14] characterized dually flat and projectively flat Minkowskian product Finsler manifolds. Tian, He, et al. [
15] gave a characterization by differential equations for a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold has scalar flag curvature. Zhang, Lu and Han [
16] obtained the necessary and sufficient conditions for a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold to be a Douglas manifold or Wely manifold.
Motivated by the above research, we consider the following questions: If and are both -manifold (-stretch manifold or -stretch manifold), then whether the Minkowskian product of Finsler manifolds and is also a -manifold (-stretch manifold or -stretch manifold). The novelty of this paper lies in, based on the aforementioned issues, exploring an effective method for constructing -manifold (-stretch manifold or -stretch manifold) using the Minkowskian product.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: In
Section 2, we briefly review the basic concepts and notations required for this paper’s research. In
Section 3, we establish the formulas for both the
-curvature and the stretch
-curvature of a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold. Furthermore, we characterize the necessary and sufficient conditions for such a manifold to be a
-manifold or a
-stretch manifold. In
Section 4, we shall prove that a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold is a
-stretch manifold if and only if the component manifolds of it are both
-stretch manifolds.
2. Preliminary
In this section, we recall some basic concepts and notations in Finsler geometry which we need.
Let M be an n-dimensional Finsler manifold. Let denote the tangent bundle of M, and the complement of the zero section in is denoted by . Let be the local coordinates on M, then the induced local coordinates on are given by .
Definition 1 ([
17])
. A Finsler metric F on a manifold M is a function satisfying the following properties: - (i)
is smooth on .
- (ii)
for any .
- (iii)
for any and .
- (iv)
the Hessian matrix is positive definite on .
In this paper, we denote the inverse matrix of .
Given a Finsler manifold
, a global vector field
is induced by
F on
, which in a standard coordinate
for
is given by
, where
The
is called the spray associated to
[
6].
In Finsler geometry, the curvature is an important non-Riemannian geometric quantity.
The
curvature
of
is defined by
where
A Finsler manifold
is called a Berwald manifold if and only if
= 0 [
6]. It is well known that all tangent spaces of a Berwald manifold are linearly isometric to each other [
18].
The
curvature
of
is defined by
where
A Finsler manifold
is called weakly Berwald manifold if and only if
= 0 [
6].
Berwald connection is an important connection in Finsler geometry [
19]. The Berwald connection
was first introduced by Berwald [
17], and systemically studied in [
20]. Its connection 1-forms can be expressed as
where
is the non-linear connection coefficient of the Berwald connection [
21]. In this paper, we use “ | ” to denote the horizontal covariant derivation of the geometric quantity related to Finsler geometry about the Berwald connection of
.
The
curvature
of
is defined by
where [
6]
and
while
A Finsler manifold
is called
-manifold if and only if
= 0.
The stretch
-curvature
of
is defined by
where [
7]
and
A Finsler manifold
is said to be
-stretch manifold if and only if
.
According to Equations (
1), (
4) and (
7), we have the following inclusion relations:
curvature is another important non-Riemannian geometric quantity in Finsler geometry. The
curvature
of
is defined by
, where
A Finsler manifold
is called
-manifold if and only if
[
9].
The stretch
-curvature
of
is defined by
where [
7]
and
A Finsler manifold
is called
-stretch manifold if and only if
.
According to Equations (
2), (
9) and (
10), the inclusion relations are as follows:
Let and be m-dimensional and n-dimensional smooth manifolds, respectively, then the dimension of the product manifold is .
Let and be the natural projection maps, for any , , , we have and .
Let and be the tangent bundles of and M, respectively. Denote and be the tangent maps induced by and , respectively. Note that and . We have natural isomorphism . Denote , and .
In the following, we employ the Einstein summation convention and specify the following index conventions: lowercase Greek indices ; lowercase Latin indices ; and primed lowercase Latin indices . Geometric quantities related to or are distinguished by placing the superscripts 1 or 2 directly above the quantities, respectively.
Let
be a continuous function such that [
12]
- (a)
if and only if ;
- (b)
for any ;
- (c)
f is smooth on ;
- (d)
, for any ;
- (e)
for any ;
Definition 2 ([
12])
. Let and be two Finsler manifolds, and f be continuous function satisfying (a)–(e). Denote , , the Minkowskian product of Finsler manifold and with respect to the product function f is the product manifold endowed with the Finsler metric defined by where , , with , . Clearly, is a Finsler manifold. is called Minkowskian product Finsler manifold for short. and are called the component manifolds of . It should be noted that a Finsler metric is smooth on the slit tangent bundle, but not necessarily on the whole
unless it is Riemannian for
. Consequently,
F is defined on
, rather than on
, or on
, or on
. It is clear that the function
F, as given by Equation (
12), is a Finsler metric on
.
3. -Stretch Minkowskian Product Manifold
In this section, we shall study -stretch Minkowskian product manifold. We firstly recall the following lemmas.
Lemma 1 ([
13])
. Let be a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold of and .
Then the coefficients of spray associated to are given by Lemma 2 ([
13])
. Let be a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold of and .
Then the curvature coefficients of are given by Lemma 3 ([
13])
. Let be a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold of and .
Then the Berwald connection coefficients associated to are given by Proposition 1. Let be a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold of and .
are coefficients of the horizontal covariant derivatives of Berwald curvature. Then Proof. Step 1: we first provide the explicit expression of .
By substituting Equations (
3) and (
6) into Equation (
5), we have
Step 2: we now proceed to calculate
on the Minkowskian product Finsler manifold. The key technique lies in expressing it using the corresponding geometric quantities on its component manifolds. Note that
has 32 distinct component expressions according to the range of the indices. In the concrete computation, we will substitute Equations (
15), (
16) and (
17) from Lemma 2 into Equation (
25).
Putting
in Equation (
25), and plugging Equations (
13), (
14), (
15), (
16), (
17), (
18) and (
19) into it, yields
By a similar argument, the other equalities of the Proposition 1 are obtained. □
Proposition 2. Let be a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold of and .
Then the curvature coefficients of are given by Proof. By putting
in Equation (
4), and plugging Equations (
20) and (
22) into it, we can get
Similar calculations give the rest of the equalities of Proposition 2. □
Theorem 1. Let be a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold of and , then is a -manifold if and only if and are both -manifold.
Proof. According to the definition of
-manifold,
is
-manifold if and only if
Based on Proposition 2, Equation (
28) is equivalent to
which mean that
and
are both
-manifold. □
Remark 1. Any Berwald manifold must be a -manifold, whereas the reverse implication does not necessarily hold. Consequently, Theorem 1 extends the result of Theorem 4.2 in [12], further enriching the research achievements concerning Berwald manifolds in Finsler geometry. Using Proposition 2, formulas (
3), (
6) and (
8), and similar to the proof method of Proposition 1, the following proposition can be obtained.
Proposition 3. Let be a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold of and .
are coefficients of the horizontal covariant derivatives of . Then Proposition 4. Let be a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold of and .
Then the stretch -curvature coefficients of are given by Proof. By putting
in Equation (
7), and plugging Equation (
29) into it, we get
By a similar calculation, the other equations of the Proposition 4 are obtained. □
Theorem 2. Let be a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold of and . Then is a -stretch manifold if and only if and are both -stretch manifold.
Proof. According to the definition of
-stretch manifold,
is
-stretch manifold if and only if
Based on Proposition 4, it follows that Equation (
30) is equivalent to
which implies that
and
are both
-stretch manifold. □
Remark 2. A -manifold is necessarily a -stretch manifold, but the converse does not hold in general. Thus, Theorem 2 addresses a more general case than Theorem 1, provides a more effective approach to characterizing special Finsler manifolds.
Example 1. Let be a 3-dimensional Euclidean space endowed with a Randers metric , where . Let be an unit ball (n = 2) endowed with a Finsler metric , whereLet , where , then is a -stretch manifold. Proof. It follows from [
20] that
is a Berwald manifold, we can know
is a
-stretch manifold. It has been proven in [
6] that
is a
-stretch manifold. It is easy to verify that the product function f satisfies conditions (a)–(e). By Definition 2, we know that
is a Minkowskian product Finsler manifold of
and
. Then, it follows from Theorem 2 that
is a
-stretch manifold. □