This paper presents a new way of describing cross fields based on fourth
order tensors. We prove that the new formulation is forming a linear space in
R9. The algebraic structure of the tensors and their projections on
\mbox{SO}(3) are presented. The relationship of the new formulation with
spherical harmonics is exposed. This paper is quite theoretical. Due to pages
limitation, few practical aspects related to the computations of cross fields
are exposed. Nevetheless, a global smoothing algorithm is briefly presented and
computation of cross fields are finally depicted