Enumeration of non-orientable 3-manifolds using face-pairing graphs and union-find (Q2465412)

The present paper follows the computational approach to 3-manifold topology, via generation of exhaustive tables of minimal triangulations, already performed by many authors: as far as the closed orientable case is concerned, the most important results have been obtained by \textit{S. V. Matveev} [Acta Appl. Math. 19, No.~2, 101--130 (1990; Zbl 0724.57012), Algorithms and Computation in Mathematics 9, Springer (2007; Zbl 1128.57001)] and by \textit{B. Martelli} and \textit{C. Petronio} [Exp. Math. 10, No.~2, 207--236 (2001; Zbl 1050.57018)], while the non orientable case has been faced mainly by \textit{G. Amendola} and \textit{B. Martelli} [Topology Appl. 150, No. 1--3, 179--195 (2005; Zbl 1068.57010)] and by the author himself [J. Knot Theory Ramifications 16, No.~5, 545--574 (2007; Zbl 1133.57014)]. The contributions of the present paper are the following: \(\bullet\) several improvements to the algorithm for generating census data, which increase the speed by orders of magnitude; \(\bullet\) an extension of the closed non-orientable census from 8 to 10 tetrahedra (with the identification of the 136 distinct closed \(\mathbb P^2\)-irreducible 3-manifolds); \(\bullet\) a verification of previous closed orientable census results for up to 10 tetrahedra, and an extension of these results from a census of manifolds to a census of minimal triangulations.