SPECIFICATION OF CHIRALITY FOR LINKS AND KNOTS

A general scheme has been developed for the assignment of chirality de scriptors to chiral links and knots. For oriented links and knots, the new D/L scheme employs linking numbers, self-writhes, and writhe prof iles, in descending hierarchical order, with self-writhes and writhe p rofiles limited to alternating links and knots. A related scheme appli es to non-oriented links and knots. In a modification of a previous sc heme, the use of vertex-bicolored digraphs is introduced in order to c ompute writhe profiles of oriented links and knots. It is pointed out that even though the different geometric presentations of each individ ual chiral knot or link can be partitioned into homochirality classes, the links and knots that belong to a given configurational class, D o r L, are not homochirally similar.