The pressure field tensor is an antisymmetric tensor describing the pressure field and consisting of six components. Tensor components are at the same time components of the two three-dimensional vectors – pressure field strength and the solenoidal pressure vector.
With the pressure field tensor the pressure stress-energy tensor, the pressure field equations and pressure force in matter are defined. Pressure field is a component of general field.
To convert the components of the pressure field tensor from one inertial system to another we must take into account the transformation rule for tensors. If the reference frame K' moves with an arbitrary constant velocity with respect to the fixed reference system K, and the axes of the coordinate systems parallel to each other, the pressure field strength and the solenoidal pressure vector are converted as follows:
is the antisymmetric tensor of rank 2, it follows from this condition . Three of the six independent components of the pressure field tensor associated with the components of the pressure field strength , and the other three – with the components of the solenoidal pressure vector . Due to the antisymmetry such invariant as the contraction of the tensor with the metric tensor vanishes: .
Contraction of tensor with itself is an invariant, and the contraction of tensor product with Levi-Civita symbol as is the pseudoscalar invariant. These invariants in the special relativity can be expressed as follows:
Determinant of the tensor is also Lorentz invariant:
Through the pressure field tensor the equations of pressure field are written:
where is the mass 4-current, is the mass density in comoving reference frame, is the 4-velocity, is a constant.
Instead of (2) it is possible use the expression:
Equation (2) is satisfied identically, which is proved by substituting into it the definition for the pressure field tensor according to (1). If in (2) we insert tensor components , this leads to two vector equations:
According to (5), the solenoidal pressure vector has no sources as its divergence vanishes. From (4) follows that the time variation of the solenoidal pressure vector leads to a curl of the pressure field strength.
Equation (3) relates the pressure field to its source in the form of mass 4-current. In Minkowski space of special relativity the form of the equation is simplified and becomes:
where is the density of moving mass,
is the density of mass current.
According to the first of these equations, the pressure field strength is generated by the mass density, and according to the second equation the mass current or change in time of the pressure field strength generate the circular field of the solenoidal pressure vector.
The continuity equation for the mass 4-current is a gauge condition that is used to derive the field equation (3) from the principle of least action. Therefore, the contraction of the pressure field tensor and the Ricci tensor must be zero: . In Minkowski space the Ricci tensor equal to zero, the covariant derivative becomes the partial derivative, and the continuity equation becomes as follows:
The wave equation for the pressure field tensor is written as: [2]
Total Lagrangian for the matter in gravitational and electromagnetic fields includes the pressure field tensor and is contained in the action function: [1]
where is Lagrangian, is differential of coordinate time, is a certain coefficient, is the scalar curvature, is the cosmological constant, which is a function of the system, is the speed of light as a measure of the propagation speed of electromagnetic and gravitational interactions, is the gravitational four-potential, is the gravitational constant, is the gravitational tensor, is the electromagnetic 4-potential, is the electromagnetic 4-current, is the electric constant, is the electromagnetic tensor, is the 4-potential of acceleration field, and are the constants of acceleration field and pressure field, respectively, is the acceleration tensor, is the 4-potential of pressure field, is pressure field tensor, is the invariant 4-volume, is the square root of the determinant of metric tensor, taken with a negative sign, is the product of differentials of the spatial coordinates.
The variation of the action function by 4-coordinates leads to the equation of motion of the matter unit in gravitational and electromagnetic fields and pressure field: [2]
where the first term on the right is the gravitational force density, expressed with the help of the gravitational field tensor, second term is the Lorentz electromagnetic force density for the charge density measured in the comoving reference frame, and the last term sets the pressure force density.
If we vary the action function by the pressure 4-potential, we obtain the equation of pressure field (3).