About the projective Finsler metrizability: First steps in the non-isotropic case

Abstract

We consider the projective Finsler metrizability problem: under what conditions the solutions of a given system of second-order ordinary differential equations (SODE) coincide with the geodesics of a Finsler metric, as oriented curves. SODEs with isotropic curvature have already been thoroughly studied in the literature and have proved to be projective Finsler metrizable. In this paper, we investigate the non-isotropic case and obtain new results by examining the integrability of the Rapcs\'ak system extended with curvature conditions. We consider the $n$-dimensional generic case, where the eigenvalues of the Jacobi tensor are pairwise different and compute the first and the higher order compatibility conditions of the system. We also consider the three-dimensional case, where we find a class of non-isotropic sprays for which the PDE system is integrable and, consequently, the corresponding SODEs are projective metrizable.