A077460 Number of nonisomorphic ways a loop can cross a road (running East-West) 2n times.

1, 1, 1, 3, 12, 70, 464, 3482, 27779, 233556, 2038484, 18357672, 169599492, 1601270562, 15401735750, 150547249932, 1492451793728, 14980801247673, 152047178479946, 1558569469867824, 16119428039548246

Offset: 0

Author

N. J. A. Sloane and Jon Wild, Dec 03 2002

Keywords

• nonn
• nice

Comments

Nonisomorphic closed meanders, where two closed meanders are considered equivalent if one can be obtained from the other by reflections in an East-West or North-South mirror (a group of order 4).

Symmetries are possible by reflection in a North-South mirror, or by rotation through 180 degrees when n is odd.(see illustration). - Andrew Howroyd, Nov 24 2015

Examples

			A meander can be specified by marking 2n equally spaced points along a line and recording the order in which the meander visits the points.
For n = 2, 4, 6, 8 the solutions are as follows:
n=2: 1 2
n=4: 1 2 3 4
n=6: 1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 6 5 4, 1 2 5 4 3 6
n=8: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, 1 2 3 4 5 8 7 6, 1 2 3 4 7 6 5 8, 1 2 7 6 3 4 5 8, 1 2 3 6 7 8 5 4, 1 2 3 6 5 4 7 8, 1 2 7 6 5 4 3 8, 1 2 3 8 5 6 7 4, 1 2 3 8 7 4 5 6, 1 2 5 6 7 4 3 8, 1 2 7 4 5 6 3 8, 1 4 3 2 7 6 5 8
		

Links

• Andrew Howroyd, Illustration of Closed Meander Symmetries

Crossrefs

The total number of closed meanders with 2n crossings is given in A005315. Cf. A000682, A005316, A060206, A077055, A078104, A078105, A078591.

Programs

Mathematica

A000682 = Import["https://oeis.org/A000682/b000682.txt", "Table"][[All, 2]];
A005316 = Cases[Import["https://oeis.org/A005316/b005316.txt", "Table"], {, }][[All, 2]];
a[0] = a[1] = 1;
a[n_] := If[OddQ[n], (A005316[[n + 1]] + A005316[[2n]] + A000682[[n]])/4, (A005316[[2n]] + 2 A005316[[n + 1]])/4];
a /@ Range[0, 20] (* Jean-François Alcover, Sep 06 2019, after Andrew Howroyd *)

Formula

From Andrew Howroyd, Nov 24 2015: (Start)

a(2n+1) = (A005315(2n+1) + A005316(2n+1) + A060206(n)) / 4.

a(2n) = (A005315(2n) + 2 * A005316(2n)) / 4. (End)

Extensions

a(10)-a(20) from Andrew Howroyd, Nov 24 2015