Interlacement of double curves of immersed spheres (Q282737)

Up to self-diffeomorphisms of the two-dimensional unit sphere \(S^2\), there is a bijection between disjoint unions of smoothly embedded circles in \(S^2\) on the one hand and the corresponding trees on the other; the correspondence ``disjoint union of embedded circles \(\leftrightarrow\) tree'', is described in the paper under review. The author calls a tree paired if it has an even number of edges, which are arranged into pairs. He says that a paired tree or, equivalently, the corresponding disjoint union of paired embedded circles in \(S^2\) is realizable if there is a generic immersion of \(S^2\) into Euclidean \(3\)-space whose multiple point set is equal to the paired circles (as commented by the author: so the generic immersion has no triple points and we assume that two circles in \(S^2\) form a pair if and only if their images are equal as sets under the immersion). The main result of the paper under review says that a disjoint union of pairs of smoothly embedded circles in \(S^2\) is realizable precisely when certain conditions (specified in the paper), expressed in terms of the relative positioning of the circle pairs in \(S^2\), are fulfilled. This result is also rephrased in terms of directed graphs. The proof has a combinatorial-algebraic flavour. A two-dimensional analogue (for closed curves in the plane) of the main result was proved by \textit{P. Rosenstiehl}; see for instance [Adv. Appl. Math. 23, No. 1, 3--13 (1999; Zbl 0935.05036)].