Anisotropic tensor calculus

Abstract

We introduce the anisotropic tensor calculus, which is a way of handling tensors that depends on the direction remaining always in the same class. This means that the derivative of an anisotropic tensor is a tensor of the same type. As an application we show how to define derivations using anisotropic linear connections in a manifold. In particular, we show that the Chern connection of a Finsler metric can be interpreted as the Levi-Civita connection and we introduce the anisotropic curvature tensor. We also relate the concept of anisotropic connection with the classical concept of linear connections in the vertical bundle. Furthermore, we also introduce the concept of anisotropic Lie derivative.