Branch points of area-minimizing projective planes

Minimal surfaces in a Riemannian manifold $M^n$ are surfaces which are stationary for area: the first variation of area vanishes. In this paper we focus on surfaces of the topological type of the real projective plane $\R P^2$. We show that a minimal surface $f:\R P^2\to M^3$ which has the smallest area, among those mappings which are not homotopic to a constant mapping, is an immersion. That is, $f$ is free of branch points. As a major step toward treating minimal surfaces of the type of the projective plane, we extend the fundamental theorem of branched immersions to the nonorientable case. We also resolve a question on the directions of branch lines posed by Courant in 1950.