Hardness of embedding simplicial complexes in ℝd
Jiřı́ Matoušek, Martin Tancer, Uli Wagner · Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms · 2009
Let EMBEDk→d be the following algorithmic problem: Given a finite simplicial complex K of dimension at most k, does there exist a (piecewise linear) embedding of K into ℝd? Known results easily imply polynomiality of EMBEDk→2 (k = 1,2; the case k = 1, d = 2 is graph planarity) and of EMBEDk→2k for all k ≥ 3 (even if k is not considered fixed). We show that the celebrated result of Novikov on the algorithmic unsolvability of recognizing the 5-sphere implies that EMBEDd→d and EMBED(d−1)→d are undecidable for each d ≥ 5. Our main result is NP-hardness of EMBED2→4 and, more generally, of EMBEDk→d for all k, d with d ≥ 4 and d ≥ k ≥ (2d − 2)/3.