No label defined (Q4462801)

This article gives a beautiful introduction to Serre's work on \(\ell\)-adic representations of elliptic curves [see also \textit{J. Velu}'s article, Groupes de Galois attachés aux points d'ordre fini des courbes elliptiques sur un corps de nombres (d'après J. P. Serre), Sémin. Théorie Nombres 1971--1972, Univ. Bordeaux, No. 30 (1972; Zbl 0277.14013)]). Let \(E\) be an elliptic curve defined over some number field \(K\), and let \(\overline{K}\) denote some algebraic closure of \(K\). The absolute Galois group \(G_K = \text{ Gal}(\overline{K}/K)\) acts on the groups \(E[\ell^n]\) consisting of points on \(E(\mathbb C)\) that are killed by \(\ell^n\). By forming the inverse limit of the \(E[\ell^n]\) we get a \(G_K\)-module \(T_\ell(E)\), the Tate module. As abelian groups we have \(T_\ell(E) \simeq \mathbb Z_\ell \oplus \mathbb Z_\ell\), hence the Galois action on the Tate module yields a representation \(\rho_{\ell,E}: G_K \longrightarrow \text{ GL}_2(\mathbb Z_\ell)\). \textit{J.-P. Serre} [Invent. Math. 15, 259--331 (1972; Zbl 0235.14012)] studied the images of these representations as \(\ell\) varies, and found that if \(E\) does not have complex multiplication, then the image of \(G_K\) under \(\rho = \prod_\ell \rho_{\ell,E}\) in the topological group \(\prod_\ell \text{ GL}_2(\mathbb Z_\ell)\) is open. The author explains the ingredients and the main steps of Serre's proof, and concludes with a few examples. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1022.00013].