Homotopy invariance of 4-manifold decompositions: connected sums

Abstract

We show, up to h-cobordism, that the existence and uniqueness of connected sum decompositions of oriented 4-dimensional manifolds is an invariant of homotopy equivalence, assuming that the fundamental group of each summand is "good" in the sense of Freedman and Quinn. On a separate note, we observe that the Borel Conjecture is true in dimension 4 up to s-cobordism, assuming that the fundamental group satisfies the Farrell--Jones Conjecture.