Decision problems for 3-manifolds and their fundamental groups (Q906847)

The three classical decision problems for finitely presented groups are: the \textit{word problem}, the \textit{conjugacy problem}, and the \textit{isomorphism problem}. They are the algorithmic problems of deciding, respectively, whether two words in the generators of a finitely presented group represent the same element, or represent conjugate elements, or whether two given finite group presentations define isomorphic groups. Two other important and related questions are: the \textit{membership problem}, a generalization of the word problem, and the topological \textit{homeomorphism problem}, where one tries to find an algorithm for deciding whether two triangulated manifolds are homeomorphic. {\vskip 2mm} Although it is known that, in their full generality, these problems are all undecidable, when one restricts the questions to the class of compact 3-manifolds, it is possible to concretely solve them. {\vskip 2mm} In this survey the authors present a detailed review of all these decision problems, together with their solutions, in 3-dimensional topology. The paper is very well organized and it is written in an easy and comprehensible way both for researchers working in low-dimensional topology and for group theorists. It is not necessary to have a specific deep knowledge in group theory, nor in 3-dimensional topology nor in computability theory, because all the basics needed are defined and explained and all the main classical and recent theorems are mentioned and commented. Some technical proofs are omitted, others are just sketched and still others are given in detail. {\vskip 2mm} In particular, the paper provides the complete proofs that all the aforementioned decision problems are solvable for (fundamental groups of most) compact 3-manifolds, without going into the details of the time complexity of algorithms. Furthermore, the presence of a large bibliography allows the interested reader to find easily all complementary information. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1333.57003].