Hydrodynamic Enhancement of $p$-atic Defect Dynamics

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.

References in corpus (26)

• Spontaneous motion in hierarchically assembled active matter
• Meso-scale turbulence in living fluids
• Topology and Dynamics of Active Nematic Vesicles
• Fluid dynamics of bacterial turbulence
• Rheology of Active-Particle Suspensions
• Topological defect launches 3D mound in the active nematic sheet of neural progenitors
• Defect annihilation and proliferation in active nematics
• Defect dynamics in active nematics
• Hydrodynamics of topological defects in nematic liquid crystals
• Onset of meso-scale turbulence in living fluids
• Theory of defect-mediated morphogenesis
• Machine learning active-nematic hydrodynamics
• Orientational properties of nematic disclinations
• Lattice Boltzmann Methods and Active Fluids
• Topology and morphology of self-deforming active shells
• Rotation and propulsion in 3d active chiral droplets
• Cross-talk between topological defects in different fields revealed by nematic microfluidics
• Hydrodynamics of domain growth in nematic liquid crystals
• Cascade or not cascade? Energy transfer and elastic effects in active nematics
• Multi-scale control of active emulsion dynamics
• Fingering Instability of Active Nematic Droplets
• Hydrodynamic theory of $p-$atic liquid crystals
• Cholesteric shells: two-dimensional blue fog and finite quasicrystals
• Long-ranged order and flow alignment in sheared $p-$atic liquid crystals
• Point Defects, Chirality and Singularity Theory in Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Droplets
• Annihilation of Point Defect Pairs in Freely Suspended Liquid-Crystal Films

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Collective epithelial migration mediated by the unbinding of hexatic defects