Expansions of a chord diagram and alternating permutations (Q907254)

Summary: A chord diagram is a set of chords of a circle such that no pair of chords has a common endvertex. A chord diagram \(E\) with \(n\) chords is called an \(n\)-crossing if all chords of \(E\) are mutually crossing. A chord diagram \(E\) is called nonintersecting if \(E\) contains no \(2\)-crossing. For a chord diagram \(E\) having a \(2\)-crossing \(S = \{ x_1 x_3, x_2 x_4 \}\), the expansion of \(E\) with respect to \(S\) is to replace \(E\) with \(E_1 = (E \setminus S) \cup \{ x_2 x_3, x_4 x_1 \}\) or \(E_2 = (E \setminus S) \cup \{ x_1 x_2, x_3 x_4 \}\). It is shown that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the multiset of all nonintersecting chord diagrams generated from an \(n\)-crossing with a finite sequence of expansions and the set of alternating permutations of order \(n+1\).