Connected sum decompositions of high-dimensional manifolds (Q2058913)

This paper discusses the degree to which the unique connected sum decomposition result for closed oriented \(3\)-manifolds extends to higher dimensions. The results are framed in terms of a series of abelian monoids whose operation is connected sum. The monoids are denoted \(\mathcal{M}_{n}^{Cat}, \mathcal{M}_{n}^{Cat,sc},\mathcal{M}_{n}^{Cat,hc}\) where \(Cat\) is one of Top, PL or Diff, the index \textit{sc} denotes simply connected and \textit{hc} denotes highly connected -- meaning that the homotopy groups of the manifolds involved vanish below the middle dimension. The authors show that in sufficiently high dimension these monoids can fail to be unique factorization monoids. Cases where the monoids are unique factorization are shown as well. Thickenings are used to obtain examples of manifolds that are not cancellable in the monoids. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1459.37002].