Anisotropic kinetic pressure in ideal MHD and application to entropy production in neutrino-driven wind in supernovae

We study the stress tensor of electron in strong magnetic fields which are greater than the critical value B-c similar or equal to 4.4 x 10(13) G. We claim that such a strong magnetic field induces the anisotropic kinetic pressure term of electron in magnetohydrodynamic equations and can generate entropy in collisional quantum plasmas. We discuss its consequence to the neutrino-driven wind in core-collapse supernovae and argue that it can produce large entropy per baryon, S similar to 400k(B). This mechanism might successfully account for the production of the heavy nuclei with mass numbers A = 80-250 through the r-process nucleosynthesis. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.