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The Maxwell stress tensor (named after James Clerk Maxwell) is a symmetric second-order tensor in three dimensions that is used in classical electromagnetism to represent the interaction between electromagnetic forces and mechanical momentum. In simple situations, such as a point charge moving freely in a homogeneous magnetic field, it is easy to calculate the forces on the charge from the Lorentz force law. When the situation becomes more complicated, this ordinary procedure can become impractically difficult, with equations spanning multiple lines. It is therefore convenient to collect many of these terms in the Maxwell stress tensor, and to use tensor arithmetic to find the answer to the problem at hand.
In the relativistic formulation of electromagnetism, the nine components of the Maxwell stress tensor appear, negated, as components of the electromagnetic stress–energy tensor, which is the electromagnetic component of the total stress–energy tensor. The latter describes the density and flux of energy and momentum in spacetime.