A five-dimensional treatment of the Boltzmann equation is used to establishthe constitutive equations that relate thermodynamic fluxes and forces up tofirst order in the gradients for simple charged fluids in the presence ofelectromagnetic fields. The formalism uses the ansatz first introduced byKaluza back in 1921, proposing that the particle charge-mass ratio isproportional to the fifth component of its velocity field. It is shown that inthis approach, space-time curvature yields thermodynamic forces leading togeneralizations of the well-known cross-effects present in linear irreversiblethermodynamics.
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