On thea priori structure of the viscous tensor in a magnetoplasma

Summary

The general structure of the viscous tensor μ_ixrs in an anisotropic continuum whose anisotropy is merely related to the existence of a locally prescribed, privileged (oriented) direction is inferred on the basis of pure covariance/symmetry arguments. This means that, leaving out of considerations whatever microscopic model, the 36 components of μ_ixrs are a priori constructed in terms of a much smaller number p (p = 9 at most) of independent state functions. One gets p = 5 for a magnetoplasma, of course in agreement with the current transport theories.