Mollifier smoothing of $C^0$-Finsler structures

Abstract: A $C^0$-Finsler structure is a continuous function $F:TM \rightarrow [0,\infty)$ defined on the tangent bundle of a differentiable manifold $M$ such that its restriction to each tangent space is an asymmetric norm. We use the convolution of $F$ with the standard mollifier in order to construct a mollifier smoothing of $F$, which is a one parameter family of Finsler structures $F_\varepsilon$ (of class $\mathit{C}^\infty$ on $TM\backslash 0$) that converges uniformly to $F$ on compact subsets of $TM$. We prove that when $F$ is a Finsler structure, then the Chern connection, the Cartan connection, the Hashiguchi connection, the Berwald connection and the flag curvature of $F_\varepsilon$ converges uniformly on compact subsets to the corresponding objects of $F$. As an application of this mollifier smoothing, we study examples of two-dimensional piecewise smooth Riemannian manifolds with nonzero total curvature on a line segment. We also indicate how to extend this study to the correspondent piecewise smooth Finsler manifolds.