Surjectivity of the adelic Galois representation associated to a Drinfeld module of rank 3 (Q2127198)

\textit{J.-P. Serre} showed in [Invent. Math. 15, 259--331 (1972; Zbl 0235.14012)] that there exist elliptic curves whose \(l\)-adic Galois representations \[ \rho_{E,{\mathfrak l}}:G_{\mathbb Q}\longrightarrow\mathrm{Aut}(T_l(E)) \cong\mathrm{GL}_2({\mathbb Z}_l) \] are all surjective. The answer to the question of whether there exists an elliptic curve over \({\mathbb Q}\) whose adelic Galois representation \[ \rho_E:G_{\mathbb Q}\longrightarrow \mathrm{Aut}(E(\bar K)_{\mathrm{tor}})\cong \mathrm{GL}_2(\hat{\mathbb Z}) \] is surjective, was given by Serre himself in the negative, by proving that the image of the adelic Galois representation of an elliptic curve \(E\) over \({\mathbb Q}\) has index greater than or equal to \(2\) in \(\mathrm{GL}_2(\hat{\mathbb Z})\). This paper deals with the analogous question for Drinfeld modules. That is, one may ask whether there is a Drinfeld module of rank \(r\) over \({\mathbb F}_q (T)\) whose adelic Galois representation is surjective. For rank \(1\) Drinfeld modules, \textit{D. Hayes} showed in [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 189, 77--91 (1974; Zbl 0292.12018)] that the adelic Galois representation of the Carlitz module is surjective. For rank \(2\) Drinfeld modules, \textit{D. Zywina} [``Drinfeld modules with maximal Galois action on their torsion points'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1110.4365}] proved that the adelic Galois representation of the \(2\)-rank module \(\phi_T= T+\tau-T^{q-1}\tau^2\) is surjective if \(q\geq 5\) is an odd prime power. The main result of this paper, whose proof is based on that of Zywina for the rank \(2\) case, is the following. If \(q=p^e\) is an odd prime power with \(p\geq 5\) and \(p\equiv 1\bmod 3\), then the adelic Galois representation of the rank \(3\) Drinfeld module \(\varphi_T=T+\tau^2+T^{q-1}\tau^3\) \[ \rho_{\varphi}:\mathrm{Gal}({\mathbb F}_q(T)^{\mathrm{sep}}/{\mathbb F}_q(T)) \longrightarrow \lim_{\substack{\longleftarrow\\ {\mathfrak a}}}\mathrm{Aut} (\varphi[{\mathfrak a}])\cong \mathrm{GL}_3(\hat A), \] is surjective, where \(A={\mathbb F}_q[T]\) and \(\hat A=\lim\limits_{ \substack{\longleftarrow\\ {\mathfrak a}}}A/{\mathfrak a}\).