Hydrodynamic Enhancement of $p$-atic Defect Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper explores how hydrodynamics influences the movement and interaction of topological defects in p-atic liquid crystals, revealing a universal self-propulsion mechanism and accelerated defect annihilation, with implications for biological tissue dynamics.

Contribution

It demonstrates that hydrodynamics induces a passive self-propulsion in p-atic defects and accelerates their annihilation, revealing effects that increase with p, advancing understanding of defect dynamics.

Findings

Hydrodynamics causes defect self-propulsion for all p.

Hydrodynamics accelerates defect pair annihilation.

Effect magnitude increases with p.

Abstract

We investigate numerically and analytically the effects of hydrodynamics on the dynamics of topological defects in $p-$atic liquid crystals, i.e. two-dimensional liquid crystals with $p-$fold rotational symmetry. Importantly, we find that hydrodynamics fuels a generic passive self-propulsion mechanism for defects of winding number $s=(p-1)/p$ and arbitrary $p$. Strikingly, we discover that hydrodynamics always accelerates the annihilation dynamics of pairs of $\pm 1/p$ defects, and that, contrary to expectations, this effect increases with $p$. Our Letter paves the way towards understanding cell intercalation and other remodelling events in epithelial layers.