On realizabilty of Gauss diagrams and constructions of meanders

Abstract

The problem concerning which Gauss diagrams can be realized by knots is an old one and has been solved in several ways. In this paper, we present a direct approach to this problem. We show that the needed conditions for realizability of a Gauss diagram can be interpreted as follows “the number of exits = the number of entrances” and the sufficient condition is based on the Jordan curve theorem. Further, using matrices, we redefine conditions for realizability of Gauss diagrams and then we give an algorithm to construct meanders.