Mod p representations on elliptic curves

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Publication:2373537



Abstract: Modular Galois representations into GL_2(F_p) with cyclotomic determinant arise from elliptic curves for p = 2,3,5. We show (by constructing explicit examples) that such elliptic curves cannot be chosen to have conductor as small as possible at all primes other than p. Our proof involves finding all elliptic curves of conductor 85779, a custom computation carried out for us by Cremona. This leads to a counterexample to a conjecture of Lario and Rio. For p > 5, we construct irreducible representations with cyclotomic determinant that do not arise from any elliptic curve over Q.


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 \(\mathbb{Q}\).











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