Mod \(p\) representations on elliptic curves (Q2373537)

Let \(E\) be an elliptic curve defined over \(\mathbb{Q}\) and \(p\) a prime number. The Galois action of \(\text{Gal}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}/\mathbb{Q})\) on the \(p\)-torsion \(E[p]\) gives rise to a representation \(\rho : \text{Gal}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}/\mathbb{Q})\rightarrow \text{GL}_2(\mathbb{F}_p)\) with cyclotomic determinant. For \(p\in\{2,3,5\}\) all modular representations with cyclotomic determinant arise in this way and the paper deals with the problem of finding an elliptic curve \(E\) with ``small conductor'' (i.e. \(N_E=p^nN(\rho)\) for some \(n\), where \(N(\rho)\) is the Serre level) giving rise to a given representation \(\rho\). For \(p\in\{2,3,5\}\), the author provides explicit examples (and the details of the computations) of representations \(\rho\) of Serre level \(N(\rho)\) which are not induced by any elliptic curve of conductor \(p^nN(\rho)\) (for any \(n\)). For \(p=3\) this provides a counterexample to a conjecture of \textit{J.-C. Lario} and \textit{A. Rio} presented in [Math. Res. Lett. 3, No. 3, 329--342 (1996; Zbl 0870.11035)] predicting that certain Galois representations arise from elliptic curves with conductor \(3^nN(\rho)\). In the final section the author also proves (again with very explicit constructions) the existence of modular representations \(\rho : \text{Gal}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}/\mathbb{Q})\rightarrow \text{GL}_2(\mathbb{F}_p)\) for \(p\geq 7\) not arising from any elliptic curve \(E\) defined over \(\mathbb{Q}\).