On meandric colliers (Q2183730)

An innovative combinatorial notion is introduced: the meandric colliers as planar self-avoiding closed continuous curves crossing the \(2n\) arcs of a meander \(2r\) times. Their construction is directly derived from meandering curves by replacing the horizontal line of an open meander with a concave or convex line. The properties of the meandric colliers are studied. The permutations of meandric colliers are also meandric, in particular they encode meanders having separable permutations. Hence, a meandric collier can be considered as a special coiling of a meander. However, a meandric collier can hold more information than a meander, regarding specific points or areas of the plane. Their enumeration is also examined with very interesting results. The numbering of its meandric points introduces a coordinate system and the arcs of the meandric collier and its generator divide the plane into regions. The problem of refolding a meander of great order into a vector of components of a meandric collier, is also considered. Several transformations can be applied on a meandric collier, to obtain a new one. By replacing some components with others, one can increase or decrease the order and complexity of the meandric collier. Moreover, the same procedure can be repeated for constructing a meandric collier on an existing meandric collier by replacing selected arcs with suitable meandering curves on a convex or concave line. In this way, more complex curves can be obtained which can be regarded as meandric colliers having simpler meandric colliers as generators. These new ideas and results presented hold very interesting insights on transformations which could be successfully applied and appear extremely helpful in various scientific fields.