A note on the irreducibility of Hecke polynomials (Q1277202)

The authors consider characteristic polynomials of Hecke operators acting on spaces of elliptic modular forms. Let \(S_k^{\text{new}}(N,\chi)\) be the space of newforms of character \(\chi\) and weight \(k\) with respect to \(\Gamma_0(N)\) and let \(\mathbb K\) be the field obtained by adjoining all Hecke eigenvalues for \(p \nmid N\) of forms in \(S_k^{\text{new}}(N,\chi)\) to \(\mathbb Q\), let \(\mathcal L\) be a prime ideal of \(\mathbb K\). Then it is shown (as a quite direct application of Chebotarev density and the connections of modular forms with Galois representations) that the number of primes \(p\) such that the characteristic polynomial of \(T_p\) is congruent modulo \(\mathcal L\) to that of a fixed \(T_q\) has positive Dirichlet density.