Examples of flag-wise positively curved spaces

Abstract

A Finsler space $(M,F)$ is called flag-wise positively curved, if for any $x\in M$ and any tangent plane $\mathbf{P}\subset T_xM$, we can find a nonzero vector $y\in \mathbf{P}$, such that the flag curvature $K^F(x,y, \mathbf{P})>0$. Though compact positively curved spaces are very rare in both Riemannian and Finsler geometry, flag-wise positively curved metrics should be easy to be found. A generic Finslerian perturbation for a non-negatively curved homogeneous metric may have a big chance to produce flag-wise positively curved metrics. This observation leads our discovery of these metrics on many compact manifolds. First we prove any Lie group $G$ such that its Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ is compact non-Abelian and $\dim\mathfrak{c}(\mathfrak{g})\leq 1$ admits flag-wise positively curved left invariant Finsler metrics. Similar techniques can be applied to our exploration for more general compact coset spaces. We will prove, whenever $G/H$ is a compact simply connected coset space, $G/H$ and $S^1\times G/H$ admit flag-wise positively curved Finsler metrics. This provides abundant examples for this type of metrics, which are not homogeneous in general.