Geodesic fields for Pontryagin type $C^0$-Finsler manifolds

Abstract

Let $M$ be a differentiable manifold, $T_xM$ be its tangent space at $x\in M$ and $TM=\{(x,y);x\in M;y \in T_xM\}$ be its tangent bundle. A $C^0$-Finsler structure is a continuous function $F:TM \rightarrow \mathbb [0,\infty)$ such that $F(x,\cdot): T_xM \rightarrow [0,\infty)$ is an asymmetric norm. In this work we introduce the Pontryagin type $C^0$-Finsler structures, which are structures that satisfy the minimum requirements of Pontryagin's maximum principle for the problem of minimizing paths. We define the extended geodesic field $\mathcal E$ on the slit cotangent bundle $T^\ast M\backslash 0$ of $(M,F)$, which is a generalization of the geodesic spray of Finsler geometry. We study the case where $\mathcal E$ is a locally Lipschitz vector field. We show some examples where the geodesics are more naturally represented by $\mathcal E$ than by a similar structure on $TM$. Finally we show that the maximum of independent Finsler structures is a Pontryagin type $C^0$-Finsler structure where $\mathcal E$ is a locally Lipschitz vector field.