Rational self-equivalences of spaces in the genus of a product of quaternionic projective spaces (Q1298046)

For \(G=S^3 \times \cdots \times S^3\) let \(X\) be a space such that the \(p\)-completion \((X)^\wedge_p\) is homotopy equivalent to \((BG)^\wedge_p\) for any prime \(p\). We investigate the monoid of rational equivalences of \(X\), denoted by \(\varepsilon_ 0 (X)\). This topological question is transformed into a matrix problem over \(\mathbb Q \otimes \mathbb Z^\wedge\), since \(\varepsilon_ 0 (BG)\) is the set of monomial matrices whose nonzero entries are odd squares. It will be shown that a submonoid of \(\varepsilon_ 0 (X)\), denoted by \(\delta_0(X)\), determines the decomposability of \(X\). Namely, if \(\mathbb N_{\text{odd}}\) denotes the monoid of odd natural numbers, Theorem 2 shows that the monoid \(\delta_0(X)\) is isomorphic to a direct sum of copies of \(\mathbb N_{\text{odd}}\). Moreover, the space \(X\) splits into \(m\) indecomposable spaces if and only if \(\delta_0(X) \cong (\mathbb N_{\text{odd}})^m\). When such a space \(X\) is indecomposable, the relationship between \([X, X]\) and \([BG, BG]\) is discussed. Our results indicate that the homotopy set \([X, X]\) contains less maps if \(X\) is not homotopy equivalent to the product of quaternionic projective spaces \(BG=\mathbb H P^\infty \times \cdots \times \mathbb H P^\infty\).