Hydrodynamic enhancement of p−atic defect dynamics

We investigate numerically and analytically the effects of hydrodynamics on the dynamics oftopological 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 ±1/p defects, and that, contrary to expectations, this effect increases with p. Our work paves the way towards understanding cell intercalation and other remodelling events in epithelial layers.