POSITIVELY CURVED FINSLER METRICS ON VECTOR BUNDLES

Abstract We construct a convex and strongly pseudoconvex Kobayashi positive Finsler metric on a vector bundle E under the assumption that the symmetric power of the dual $S^kE^*$ has a Griffiths negative $L^2$ -metric for some k. The proof relies on the negativity of direct image bundles and the Minkowski inequality for norms. As a corollary, we show that given a strongly pseudoconvex Kobayashi positive Finsler metric, one can upgrade to a convex Finsler metric with the same property. We also give an extremal characterization of Kobayashi curvature for Finsler metrics.