Finding non-orientable surfaces in 3-manifolds

Abstract

We investigate the complexity of finding an embedded non-orientable surface of Euler genus $g$ in a triangulated $3$-manifold. This problem occurs both as a natural question in low-dimensional topology, and as a first non-trivial instance of embeddability of complexes into $3$-manifolds. We prove that the problem is NP-hard, thus adding to the relatively few hardness results that are currently known in 3-manifold topology. In addition, we show that the problem lies in NP when the Euler genus g is odd, and we give an explicit algorithm in this case.