Local torsion on elliptic curves and the deformation theory of Galois representations (Q935898)

Let \(E\) be an elliptic curve over \(\mathbb Q.\) The authors give heuristic reasons which justify the following Conjecture. Assume that \(E\) does not have complex multiplication. Fix \(d\geq 1.\) Then there are finitely many primes \(p\) such that there exists an extension \(K/{{\mathbb Q}_{p}}\) of degree at most \(d\) with \(E(K)[p]\neq 0.\) The motivation for the study of this conjecture was some questions in the theory of deformation of Galois representations. Let \({\mathcal S}_{A,B}\) denote the set of elliptic curves with Weierstrass equations \(y^{2}=x^{3}+ax+b\) such that \(a,b \in {\mathbb Z} , \, |a| \leq A , \, |b|\leq B.\) Let further, for \(x>0\) \({\pi }^{d}_{E}(x)\) be the number of primes \(p\leq x\) such that \(E\) has a point of order \(p\) over an extension of \({\mathbb Q}_{p}\) of degree at most \(d.\) The main result of the paper is the following {Theorem. } Fix \(d\geq 1.\) Assume \(A,B \geq x^{{\frac{7}{4}}+\epsilon}\) for some \({\epsilon}>0.\) Then \[ {\frac{1}{{\#}{\mathcal S}_{A,B}}}{\sum}_{E\in {\mathcal S}_{A,B}}{\pi }^{d}_{E}(x) << d^{2} \] as \(x\rightarrow \infty .\) For \(d\geq 1,\) let \({\pi }^{cf}_{E}(x)\) be the number of primes \(p \leq x\) such that \(a_{p}(E)={{+}\over {}}1\) and the newform \(f_{E}={\sum}a_{n}(E)q^{n}\) associated to \(E\) possesses a companion form modulo \(p.\) The above theorem along with the result of \textit{B. H. Gross} [Duke Math. J. 61, No. 2, 445--517 (1990; Zbl 0743.11030)] yield the following Theorem. Assume \(A,B \geq x^{{\frac{7}{4}}+\epsilon}\) for some \({\epsilon}>0.\) Then \[ {\frac{1}{{\#}{\mathcal S}_{A,B}}}{\sum}_{E\in {\mathcal S}_{A,B}}{\pi }^{cf}_{E}(x) << d^{2} \] as \(x\rightarrow \infty .\)