$h$-cobordisms between $1$-connected manifolds with boundary

Abstract

We classify $h$-cobordisms between compact simply-connected $4$-manifolds with boundary in both the smooth and topological categories. This extends a result of Kreck, which proved the corresponding result for closed manifolds. As an application, we recover the injectivity portion of Orson-Powell's computation of the mapping class group for simply-connected topological $4$-manifolds with boundary.