Ricci Flow on Open 4-Manifolds with Positive Isotropic Curvature

In this note we prove the following result: Let X be a complete, connected 4-manifold with uniformly positive isotropic curvature, with bounded geometry, and with no essential incompressible space form. Then X is diffeomorphic to $\mathbb{S}^{4}$ , or $\mathbb{RP}^{4}$ , or $\mathbb{S}^{3}\times\mathbb {S}^{1}$ , or $\mathbb{S}^{3}\widetilde{\times} \mathbb{S}^{1}$ , or a possibly infinite connected sum of them. This extends work of Hamilton and Chen–Zhu to the noncompact case. The proof uses Ricci flow with surgery on complete 4-manifolds, and is inspired by recent work of Bessières, Besson, and Maillot.