On automorphic points in polarized deformation rings

The coefficient space is a kind of resolution of singularities of the universal flat deformation space for a given Galois representation of some local field. It parametrizes (in some sense) the finite flat models for the Galois representation. The aim of this note is to determine the image of the coefficient space in the universal deformation space.

We prove a variety of results on the existence of automorphic Galois representations lifting a residual automorphic Galois representation. We prove a result on the structure of deformation rings of local Galois representations, and deduce from this and the method of Khare and Wintenberger a result on the existence of modular lifts of specified type for Galois representations corresponding to Hilbert modular forms of parallel weight 2. We discuss some conjectures on the weights of n-dimensional mod p Galois representations. Finally, we use recent work of Taylor to prove level raising and lowering results for n-dimensional automorphic Galois representations.

We prove the vanishing of the geometric Bloch-Kato Selmer group for the adjoint representation of a Galois representation associated to regular algebraic polarized cuspidal automorphic representations under an assumption on the residual image. Using this, we deduce that the localization and completion of a certain universal deformation ring for the residual representation at the characteristic zero point induced from the automorphic representation is formally smooth of the correct dimension. We do this by employing the Taylor-Wiles-Kisin patching method together with Kisin's technique of analyzing the generic fibre of universal deformation rings. Along the way we give a characterization of smooth closed points on the generic fibre of Kisin's potentially semistable local deformation rings in terms of their Weil-Deligne representations.

We determine the universal deformation ring, in the sense of Mazur, of a residual representation $\bar \rho :G_K\to {\rm GL}_2(k)$ , where k is a finite field of characteristic p and K is a local field of residue characteristic p . As one might hope for, but is not proven in the global case, the deformation ring is a complete intersection, flat over W(k) , with the exact number of equations given by the dimension of $H^2(G_K,{\rm ad}_{\bar \rho})$ . We then go on to determine the ordinary locus inside the deformation space and, using ideas of Mazur, apply this to compare the universal and the universal ordinary deformation spaces. Provided that the universal ring for ordinary deformations with fixed determinant is finite flat over W(k) , as was shown in many cases by Diamond, Fujiwara, Taylor–Wiles and Wiles, we show that the corresponding universal deformation ring – with no restriction of ordinariness or fixed determinant – is a complete intersection, finite flat over W(k) of the dimension conjectured by Mazur, provided that the restriction of $\det (\bar \rho)$ to the inertia subgroup is different from the inverse cyclotomic character.

We show the vanishing of adjoint Bloch–Kato Selmer groups of automorphic Galois representations over CM fields. This proves their rigidity in the sense that they have no deformations that are de Rham. In order for this to make sense, we also prove that automorphic Galois representations over CM fields are de Rham themselves. Our methods draw heavily from the 10 author paper, where these Galois representations were studied extensively. Another crucial piece of inspiration comes from the work of P. Allen who used the smoothness of certain local deformation rings in characteristic $0$ to obtain rigidity in the polarized case.

Conjecturally, the Galois representations that are attached to essentially self-dual regular algebraic cuspidal automorphic representations are Zariski-dense in a polarized Galois deformation ring. We prove new results in this direction in the context of automorphic forms on definite unitary groups over totally real fields. This generalizes the infinite fern argument of Gouvêa–Mazur and Chenevier and relies on the construction of nonclassical p-adic automorphic forms and the computation of the tangent space of the space of trianguline Galois representations. This boils down to a surprising statement about the linear envelope of intersections of Borel subalgebras.

Let K be an arbitrary number field, and let ρ : Gal($\math{\bar{K}}$/K) → GL2(E) be a nearly ordinary irreducible geometric Galois representation. In this paper, we study the nearly ordinary deformations of ρ. When K is totally real and ρ is modular, results of Hida imply that the nearly ordinary deformation space associated to ρ contains a Zariski dense set of points corresponding to ‘automorphic’ Galois representations. We conjecture that if K is not totally real, then this is never the case, except in three exceptional cases, corresponding to: (1) ‘base change’, (2) ‘CM’ forms, and (3) ‘even’ representations. The latter case conjecturally can only occur if the image of ρ is finite. Our results come in two flavours. First, we prove a general result for Artin representations, conditional on a strengthening of the Leopoldt Conjecture. Second, when K is an imaginary quadratic field, we prove an unconditional result that implies the existence of ‘many’ positive-dimensional components (of certain deformation spaces) that do not contain infinitely many classical points. Also included are some speculative remarks about ‘p-adic functoriality’, as well as some remarks on how our methods should apply to n-dimensional representations of Gal($\math{\bar{\QQ}}$/ℚ) when n > 2.

Deformations and the rigidity method

We study G-valued Galois deformation rings with prescribed properties, where G is an arbitrary (not necessarily connected) reductive group over an extension of Z_l for some prime l. In particular, for the Galois groups of p-adic local fields (with p possibly equal to l) we prove that these rings are generically smooth, compute their dimensions, and show that functorial operations on Galois representations give rise to well-defined maps between the sets of irreducible components of the corresponding deformation rings. We use these local results to prove lower bounds on the dimension of global deformation rings with prescribed local properties. Applying our results to unitary groups, we improve results in the literature on the existence of lifts of mod l Galois representations, and on the weight part of Serre's conjecture.

We investigate the case of deformations of even Galois representations. Our methods are the group theoretic ones mainly developed by Nigel Boston to study odd representations. We present conditions for Borel and tame cases under which the universal deformation ring is isomorphic to ℤp[[T]] and where we compute the universal deformation explicitly. Furthermore we produce a family of examples of totally real S3 extensions which satisfy the above conditions in the tame case and we give examples in the Borel case. Finally we study the change of the deformation space under enlarging the ramification and thus give an example of an even representation that is not twist‐finite.

Let m m be an integer greater than three and ℓ \ell be an odd prime. In this paper we prove that at least one of the following groups: P Ω 2 m ± ( F ℓ s ) \mathrm {P}\Omega ^\pm _{2m}(\mathbb {F}_{\ell ^s}) , P S O 2 m ± ( F ℓ s ) \mathrm {PSO}^\pm _{2m}(\mathbb {F}_{\ell ^s}) , P O 2 m ± ( F ℓ s ) \mathrm {PO}_{2m}^\pm (\mathbb {F}_{\ell ^s}) , or P G O 2 m ± ( F ℓ s ) \mathrm {PGO}^\pm _{2m}(\mathbb {F}_{\ell ^s}) is a Galois group of Q \mathbb {Q} for infinitely many integers s > 0 s > 0 . This is achieved by making use of a slight modification of a group theory result of Khare, Larsen, and Savin, and previous results of the author on the images of the Galois representations attached to cuspidal automorphic representations of G L 2 m ( A Q ) \mathrm {GL}_{2m}(\mathbb {A}_\mathbb {Q}) .

We prove that the universal unramified deformation ring [math] of a continuous Galois representation [math] (for a totally real field [math] and finite field [math] ) is finite over [math] in many cases. We also prove (under similar hypotheses) that the universal deformation ring [math] is finite over the local deformation ring [math] .

In his work on modularity theorems, Wiles proved a numerical criterion for a map of rings $R\to T$ to be an isomorphism of complete intersections. He used this to show that certain deformation rings and Hecke algebras associated to a mod $p$ Galois representation at non-minimal level are isomorphic and complete intersections, provided the same is true at minimal level. In this paper we study Hecke algebras acting on cohomology of Shimura curves arising from maximal orders in indefinite quaternion algebras over the rationals localized at a semistable irreducible mod $p$ Galois representation $\bar {\rho }$. If $\bar {\rho }$ is scalar at some primes dividing the discriminant of the quaternion algebra, then the Hecke algebra is still isomorphic to the deformation ring, but is not a complete intersection, or even Gorenstein, so the Wiles numerical criterion cannot apply. We consider a weight-2 newform $f$ which contributes to the cohomology of the Shimura curve and gives rise to an augmentation $\lambda _f$ of the Hecke algebra. We quantify the failure of the Wiles numerical criterion at $\lambda _f$ by computing the associated Wiles defect purely in terms of the local behavior at primes dividing the discriminant of the global Galois representation $\rho _f$ which $f$ gives rise to by the Eichler–Shimura construction. One of the main tools used in the proof is Taylor–Wiles–Kisin patching.

Density of Selmer ranks in families of even Galois representations, Wiles' formula, and global reciprocity

We fix a primep. In this paper, starting from a given Galois representation ϕ having values inp-adic points of a classical groupG, we study the adjoint action of ϕ on thep-adic Lie algebra of the derived group ofG. We call this new Galois representation the adjoint representation Ad(ϕ) of ϕ. Under a suitablep-ordinarity condition (and ramification conditions outsidep), we define, following Greenberg, the Selmer group Sel(Ad(ϕ))/L for each number fieldL. We scrutinize the behavior of Sel(Ad(ϕ))/E∞ as an Iwasawa module for a fixed ℤp-extensionE∞/E of a number fieldE and deduce an exact control theorem. A key ingredient of the proof is the isomorphism between the Pontryagin dual of the Selmer group and the module of Kahler differentials of the universal nearly ordinary deformation ring of ϕ. WhenG=GL(2), ϕ is a modular Galois representation and the base fieldE is totally real, from a recent result of Fujiwara identifying the deformation ring with an appropriatep-adic Hecke algebra, we conclude some fine results on the structure of the Selmer groups, including torsion-property and an exact limit formula ats=0 of the characteristic power series, after removing the trivial zero.