-adic images of Galois for elliptic curves over (and an appendix with John Voight)

Abstract

AbstractWe discuss the$\ell $-adic case of Mazur’s ‘Program B’ over$\mathbb {Q}$: the problem of classifying the possible images of$\ell $-adic Galois representations attached to elliptic curvesEover$\mathbb {Q}$, equivalently, classifying the rational points on the corresponding modular curves. The primes$\ell =2$and$\ell \ge 13$are addressed by prior work, so we focus on the remaining primes$\ell = 3, 5, 7, 11$. For each of these$\ell $, we compute the directed graph of arithmetically maximal$\ell $-power level modular curves$X_H$, compute explicit equations for all but three of them and classify the rational points on all of them except$X_{\mathrm {ns}}^{+}(N)$, for$N = 27, 25, 49, 121$and two-level$49$curves of genus$9$whose Jacobians have analytic rank$9$.Aside from the$\ell $-adic images that are known to arise for infinitely many${\overline {\mathbb {Q}}}$-isomorphism classes of elliptic curves$E/\mathbb {Q}$, we find only 22 exceptional images that arise for any prime$\ell $and any$E/\mathbb {Q}$without complex multiplication; these exceptional images are realised by 20 non-CM rationalj-invariants. We conjecture that this list of 22 exceptional images is complete and show that any counterexamples must arise from unexpected rational points on$X_{\mathrm {ns}}^+(\ell )$with$\ell \ge 19$, or one of the six modular curves noted above. This yields a very efficient algorithm to compute the$\ell $-adic images of Galois for any elliptic curve over$\mathbb {Q}$.In an appendix with John Voight, we generalise Ribet’s observation that simple abelian varieties attached to newforms on$\Gamma _1(N)$are of$\operatorname {GL}_2$-type; this extends Kolyvagin’s theorem that analytic rank zero implies algebraic rank zero to isogeny factors of the Jacobian of$X_H$.