In this paper, it is elaborated the theory the Ricci flows for manifolds enabled with nonintegrable (nonholonomic) distributions defining nonlinear connection structures. Such manifolds provide a unified geometric arena for nonholonomic Riemannian spaces, Lagrange mechanics, Finsler geometry, and various models of gravity (the Einstein theory and string, or gauge, generalizations). We follow th...

In this paper we study some rigidity properties for Finsler manifolds of sectional flag curvature. We prove that any Landsberg manifold of non-zero sectional flag curvature and any closed Finsler manifold of negative sectional flag curvature must be Riemannian.

We model pseudo–Finsler geometries, with pseudo–Euclidean signatures of metrics, for two classes of four dimensional nonholonomic manifolds: a) tangent bundles with two dimensional base manifolds and b) pseudo–Riemannian/ Einstein manifolds. Such spacetimes are enabled with nonholonomic distributions and associated nonlinear connection structures and theirs metrics are solutions of the field eq...

The aim of this paper is to show that holonomy properties of Finsler manifolds can be very different from those of Riemannian manifolds. We prove that the holonomy group of a positive definite non-Riemannian Finsler manifold of non-zero constant curvature with dimension > 2 cannot be a compact Lie group. Hence this holonomy group does not occur as the holonomy group of any Riemannian manifold. ...

We give a new and complete proof of the following theorem, discovered by Detlef Laugwitz: (forward) complete and connected finite dimensional Finsler manifolds admitting a proper homothety are Minkowski vector spaces. More precisely, we show that under these hypotheses the Finsler manifold is isometric to the tangent Minkowski vector space of the fixed point of the homothety via the exponential...

This is a survey article on global rigidity theorems for complete Finsler manifolds without boundary.

Finsler and Lagrange spaces can be equivalently represented as almost Kähler manifolds endowed with a metric compatible canonical distinguished connection structure generalizing the Levi Civita connection. The goal of this paper is to perform a natural Fedosov– type deformation quantization of such geometries. All constructions are canonically derived for regular Lagrangians and/or fundamental ...

In this paper we review some important results on the closed geodesics problem for compact Riemannian manifolds, as the Gromoll-Mayer Theorem, and discuss some extension of those results to the case of Finsler and semi Rimannian manifolds.

In this paper we take a close look at Lie derivatives on a Finsler bundle and give a geometric meaning to the vanishing of the mixed curvature of certain covariant derivatives on a Finsler bundle. As an application, we obtain some characterizations of Landsberg manifolds.

We survey the geometry of Lagrange and Finsler spaces and discuss the issues related to the definition of curvature of nonholonomic manifolds enabled with nonlinear connection structure. It is proved that any commutative Riemannian geometry (in general, any Riemann– Cartan space) defined by a generic off–diagonal metric structure (with an additional affine connection possessing nontrivial torsi...