A classification of spherical curves based on Gauss diagrams (Q338648)

The author studies a class of generic smooth closed curves on the \(2\)-sphere \(S^2\), which he terms spherical curves. Explicitly, a \textit{spherical curve} on \(S^2\) is the image of the unit circle under an immersion \(f:S^1\to S^2\), for which the multiple points are double points \(f(a)=f(b)\) (\(a\neq b\)) with transversal intersection. In the mid 1990s, \textit{V. I. Arnold} initiated a study of the classification of spherical curves into equivalence classes under the action of the groups of \(C^{\infty}\)-diffeomorphisms \(\text{Diff}(S^2)\) and \(\text{Diff}^{+}(S^2)\) (the orientation-preserving \(C^{\infty}\)-diffeomorphisms). In the paper [Am. Math. Soc. Transl. (2) 173, 17--32 (1996; Zbl 0973.53503)], he determined the number of equivalence classes of spherical curves with \(n\) double points when \(n<6\). The method used by Arnold for computing these numbers becomes very long when the number \(n\) of double points for the spherical curves is larger than \(5\). The present author therefore invented another method based on so-called Gauss diagrams, to compute the number of equivalence classes. Using this method, he could verify the results obtained by Arnold and push them further to compute the number of equivalence classes of spherical curves with \(6\) or \(7\) double points on the sphere.