An n-dimensional analogue of the Klein bottle arose in our study of topological complexity of planar polygon spaces. We determine its integral cohomology algebra and stable homotopy type, and give an explicit immersion and embedding in Euclidean space.

The first eigenvalue of the Laplacian on a surface can be viewed as a functional on the space of Riemannian metrics of a given area. Critical points of this functional are called extremal metrics. The only known extremal metrics are a round sphere, a standard projective plane, a Clifford torus and an equilateral torus. We construct an extremal metric on a Klein bottle. It is a metric of revolution, admitting a minimal isometric embedding into a sphere ${{\mathbb{S}}^{4}}$ by the first eigenfunctions. Also, this Klein bottle is a bipolar surface for Lawson's ${{\tau }_{3,1}}$-torus. We conjecture that an extremal metric for the first eigenvalue on a Klein bottle is unique, and hence it provides a sharp upper bound for ${{\lambda }_{1}}$ on a Klein bottle of a given area. We present numerical evidence and prove the first results towards this conjecture.

Let $M$ be a compact, connected, orientable, irreducible 3-manifold with a torus boundary. It is known that if two Dehn fillings on $M$ along the boundary produce a reducible manifold and a manifold containing a Klein bottle, then the distance between the filling slopes is at most three. This paper gives a remarkably short proof of this result.