Critical exponents of plane meanders

Abstract

Meanders form a set of combinatorial problems concerned with the enumeration of self-avoiding loops crossing a line through a given number of points, $n$. Meanders are considered distinct up to any smooth deformation leaving the line fixed. We use a recently developed algorithm, based on transfer matrix methods, to enumerate plane meanders. This allows us to calculate the number of closed meanders up to $n=48$, the number of open meanders up to $n=43$, and the number of semi-meanders up to $n=45$. The analysis of the series yields accurate estimates of both the critical point and critical exponent, and shows that a recent conjecture for the exact value of the semi-meander critical exponent is unlikely to be correct, while the conjectured exponent value for closed and open meanders is not inconsistent with the results from the analysis.

8 pages, 4 eps figures