On a conjecture of Meeks, P\'erez and Ros

Abstract

Meeks, P\'erez and Ros conjectured that a closed Riemannian $3$-manifold which does not admit any closed embedded minimal surface whose two-sided covering is stable, must be diffeomorphic to a quotient of the $3$-sphere. We give an counterexample to this conjecture. Also, we show that if we consider immersed surfaces instead of embedded ones, then the corresponding statement is true.