In this work, we study Berwald spacetimes and their vacuum dynamics, where the latter are based on a Finsler generalization of Einstein’s equations derived from an action on the unit tangent bundle. In particular, we consider a specific class of spacetimes that are nonflat generalizations of the very special relativity (VSR) line element, which we call “very general relativity” (VGR). We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the VGR line element to be of Berwald type. We present two novel examples with the corresponding vacuum field equations: a Finslerian generalization of vanishing scalar invariant (VSI) spacetimes in Einstein’s gravity as well as the most general homogeneous and isotropic VGR spacetime.

In this work we present Finsler gravitational waves. These are a Finslerian version of the well-known $pp$-waves, generalizing the very special relativity line element. Our Finsler $pp$-waves are an exact solution of Finslerian Einstein’s equations in vacuum and describe gravitational waves propagating in an anisotropic background.

We investigate whether Szabo’s metrizability theorem can be extended to Finsler spaces of indefinite signature. For smooth, positive definite Finsler metrics, this important theorem states that, if the metric is of Berwald type (i.e., its Chern–Rund connection defines an affine connection on the underlying manifold), then it is affinely equivalent to a Riemann space, meaning that its affine connection is the Levi–Civita connection of some Riemannian metric. We show for the first time that this result does not extend to general Finsler spacetimes. More precisely, we find a large class of Berwald spacetimes for which the Ricci tensor of the affine connection is not symmetric. The fundamental difference from positive definite Finsler spaces that makes such an asymmetry possible is the fact that generally, Finsler spacetimes satisfy certain smoothness properties only on a proper conic subset of the slit tangent bundle. Indeed, we prove that when the Finsler Lagrangian is smooth on the entire slit tangent bundle, the Ricci tensor must necessarily be symmetric. For large classes of Finsler spacetimes, however, the Berwald property does not imply that the affine structure is equivalent to the affine structure of a pseudo-Riemannian metric. Instead, the affine structure is that of a metric-affine geometry with vanishing torsion.

One of the approaches in diffusion tensor imaging is to consider a Riemannian metric given by the inverse diffusion tensor. Such a metric is used for geodesic tractography and connectivity analysis in white matter. We propose a metric tensor given by the adjugate rather than the previously proposed inverse diffusion tensor. The adjugate metric can also be employed in the sharpening framework. Tractography experiments on synthetic and real brain diffusion data show improvement for high-curvature tracts and in the vicinity of isotropic diffusion regions relative to most results for inverse (sharpened) diffusion tensors, and especially on real data. In addition, adjugate tensors are shown to be more robust to noise.

We present a new family of exact vacuum solutions to Pfeifer and Wohlfarth’s field equation in Finsler gravity, consisting of Finsler metrics that are Landsbergian but not Berwaldian, also known as unicorns due to their rarity. Interestingly, we find that these solutions have a physically viable light cone structure, even though in some cases the signature is not Lorentzian but positive definite. We furthermore find a promising analogy between our solutions and classical Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker cosmology. One of our solutions, in particular, has cosmological symmetry, i.e., it is spatially homogeneous and isotropic, and it is additionally conformally flat, with the conformal factor depending only on the timelike coordinate. We show that this conformal factor can be interpreted as the scale factor, we compute it as a function of cosmological time, and we show that it corresponds to a linearly expanding (or contracting) Finsler universe.

In this work, we study Randers spacetimes of Berwald type and analyze Pfeifer and Wohlfarth’s vacuum field equation of Finsler gravity for this class. We show that, in this case, the field equation is equivalent to the vanishing of the Finsler Ricci tensor, analogously to Einstein gravity. This implies that the considered vacuum field equation and Rutz’s equation coincide in this scenario. We also construct all exact solutions of Berwald-Randers type to vacuum Finsler gravity, which turns out to be composed of a Ricci-flat, CCNV (covariantly constant null vector) Lorentzian spacetime, or Brinkmann space, and a 1-form defined by its CCNV. Since the $\mathrm{p}\mathrm{p}$-waves are the most well-known metric in this class, we refer to the found solutions as Randers $\mathrm{p}\mathrm{p}$-waves.