We prove two "large images" results for the Galois representations attached to a degree $d$ Q-curve $E$ over a quadratic field $K$: if $K$ is arbitrary, we prove maximality of the image for every prime $p >13$ not dividing $d$, provided that $d$ is divisible by $q$ (but $d \neq q$) with $q=2$ or 3 or 5 or 7 or 13. If $K$ is real we prove maximality of the image for every odd prime $p$ not dividing $d D$, where $D = \disc(K)$, provided that $E$ is a semistable Q-curve. In both cases we make the (standard) assumptions that $E$ does not have potentially good reduction at all primes $p \nmid 6$ and that $d$ is square-free.
A total mass is the weighted count of continuous homomorphisms from the absolute Galois group of a local field to a finite group. In the preceding paper, the authors observed that in a particular example, two total masses coming from two different weightings are dual to each other. We discuss the problem how general such a duality holds and relate it to the existence of simultaneous resolution of singularities, using the wild McKay correspondence and the Poincaré duality for stringy invariants. We also exhibit several examples.
We establish automatic realizations of Galois groups among groups M\rtimes G, where G is a cyclic group of order p^n for a prime p and M is a quotient of the group ring Fp[G].
In this paper we concentrate on the relations between the structure of small Galois groups, arithmetic of fields, Bloch-Kato conjecture, and Galois groups of maximal pro-$p$-quotients of absolute Galois groups.
This is a report of a talk given at the Oberwolfach workshop on "cohomology of finite groups: Interactions and applications" which was held during July 25th - July 31st, 2010. It is an announcement of some of the results (with motivation) and their applications from the paper "Quotients of absolute Galois groups which determine the entire Galois cohomology"; see arXiv:0905.1364.
Let K/F be a cyclic field extension of odd prime degree. We consider Galois embedding problems involving Galois groups with common quotient Gal(K/F) such that corresponding normal subgroups are indecomposable Fp[Gal(K/F)]-modules. For these embedding problems we prove conditions on solvability, formulas for explicit construction, and results on automatic realizability.
For prime power $q=p^d$ and a field $F$ containing a root of unity of order $q$ we show that the Galois cohomology ring $H^*(G_F,\dbZ/q)$ is determined by a quotient $G_F^{[3]}$ of the absolute Galois group $G_F$ related to its descending $q$-central sequence. Conversely, we show that $G_F^{[3]}$ is determined by the lower cohomology of $G_F$. This is used to give new examples of pro-$p$ groups which do not occur as absolute Galois groups of fields.
We observe that some basic but fundamental constructions in Galois theory can be used to obtain some interesting restrictions on the structure of Galois groups of maximal $p$-extensions of fields containing a primitive $p$th root of unity. This is an extension of some significant ideas of Demushkin, Labute and Serre from local fields to all fields containing a primitive $p$th root of unity. Our techniques use certain natural simple Galois extensions together with some considerations in Galois cohomology and Massey products.
We present several constraints on the absolute Galois groups G_F of fields F containing a primitive pth root of unity, using restrictions on the cohomology of index p normal subgroups from a previous paper by three of the authors. We first classify all maximal p-elementary abelian-by-order p quotients of such G_F. In the case p>2, each such quotient contains a unique closed index p elementary abelian subgroup. This seems to be the first case in which one can completely classify nontrivial quotients of absolute Galois groups by characteristic subgroups of normal subgroups. We then derive analog…
For a prime number $p$, we show that if two certain canonical finite quotients of a finitely generated Bloch-Kato pro-$p$ group $G$ coincide, then $G$ has a very simple structure, i.e., $G$ is a $p$-adic analytic pro-$p$ group. This result has a remarkable Galois-theoretic consequence: if the two corresponding canonical finite extensions $F^{(3)}/F$ and $F^{\{3\}}/F$ of a field $F$ -- with $F$ containing a primitive $p$-th root of unity -- coincide, then $F$ is $p$-rigid. The proof relies only on group-theoretic tools, and on certain properties of Bloch-Kato pro-$p$ groups.
We present several constraints on the absolute Galois groups G_F of fields F containing a primitive pth root of unity, using restrictions on the cohomology of index p normal subgroups from a previous paper by three of the authors. We first classify all maximal p-elementary abelian-by-order p quotients of such G_F. In the case p>2, each such quotient contains a unique closed index p elementary abelian subgroup. This seems to be the first case in which one can completely classify nontrivial quotients of absolute Galois groups by characteristic subgroups of normal subgroups. We then derive analog…
We investigate a certain class of (geometric) finite (Galois) coverings of formal fibres of $p$-adic curves and the corresponding quotient of the (geometric) étale fundamental group. A key result in our investigation is that these (Galois) coverings can be compactified to finite (Galois) coverings of proper $p$-adic curves. We also prove that the maximal prime-to-$p$ quotient of the geometric étale fundamental group of a (geometrically connected) formal fibre of a $p$-adic curve is (pro-)prime-to-$p$ free of finite computable rank.
We prove that the symmetric monoidal category of mixed motives generated by an abelian variety (more generally, an abelian scheme) can be described as a certain module category. More precisely, we describe it as the category of quasi-coherent complexes over a derived quotient stack constructed from a motivic algebra of the abelian variety. We then study the structure of the motivic Galois groups of their mixed motives. We prove that the motivic Galois group is decomposed into a unipotent part constructed from the motivic algebra, and the reductive quotient which is the Tannaka dual of Grothend…
In this paper we introduce a new method for finding Galois groups by computer. This is particularly effective in the case of Galois groups of p-extensions ramified at finitely many primes but unramified at the primes above p. Such Galois groups have been regarded as amongst the most mysterious objects in number theory. Very little has hitherto been discovered regarding them despite their importance in studying p-adic Galois representations unramified at p. The conjectures of Fontaine-Mazur say that they should have no p-adic analytic quotients (equivalently, the images of the Galois representa…
This paper studies the Galois action on a special lattice of geometric origin, which is related to mod-$\ell$ abelian-by-central quotients of geometric fundamental groups of varieties. As a consequence, we formulate and prove the mod-$\ell$ abelian-by-central variant/strengthening of a conjecture due to Ihara/Oda-Matsumoto.
For every $q=l^3$ with $l$ a prime power greater than 2, the GK curve $X$ is an $F_{q^2}$-maximal curve that is not $F_{q^2}$-covered by any $F_{q^2}$-maximal Deligne-Lusztig curve. Interestingly, $X$ has a very large $F_{q^2}$-automorphism group with respect to its genus. In this paper we compute the genera of a large variety of curves that are Galois-covered by the GK curve, thus providing several new values in the spectrum of genera of $F_{q^2}$-maximal curves.
Let $q=p^s$ be a prime power, $F$ a field containing a root of unity of order $q$, and $G_F$ its absolute Galois group. We determine a new canonical quotient $\mathrm{Gal}(F_{(3)}/F)$ of $G_F$ which encodes the full mod-$q$ cohomology ring $H^*(G_F,\mathbb{Z}/q)$ and is minimal with respect to this property. We prove some fundamental structure theorems related to these quotients. In particular, it is shown that when $q=p$ is an odd prime, $F_{(3)}$ is the compositum of all Galois extensions $E$ of $F$ such that $\mathrm{Gal}(E/F)$ is isomorphic to $\{1\}$, $\mathbb{Z}/p$ or to the nonabelian g…
A major open problem in current Galois theory is to characterize those profinite groups which appear as absolute Galois groups of various fields. Obtaining detailed knowledge of the structure of quotients and subgroup filtrations of Galois groups of $p$-extensions is an important step toward a solution. We illustrate several techniques for counting Galois $p$-extensions of various fields, including pythagorean fields and local fields. An expression for the number of extensions of a formally real pythagorean field having Galois group the dihedral group of order 8 is developed. We derive a formu…
We show that the mod p Galois representations attached to a Q-curve E of degree d over an imaginary quadratic number field K are surjective for all p larger than some constant M_{K,d}, if E has potentially multiplicative reduction at any prime not dividing 6. The proof uses Mazur's formal immersion method, a result of Darmon and Merel on non-split modular curves, and an analytic argument showing that Jacobians of certain twisted modular curves admit quotients with Mordell-Weil rank 0. In combination with a previous theorem of the author and Skinner on modularity of Q-curves, the surjectivity r…
Information about the absolute Galois group $G_K$ of a number field $K$ is encoded in how it acts on the étale fundamental group $π$ of a curve $X$ defined over $K$. In the case that $K=\mathbb{Q}(ζ_n)$ is the cyclotomic field and $X$ is the Fermat curve of degree $n \geq 3$, Anderson determined the action of $G_K$ on the étale homology with coefficients in $\mathbb{Z}/n \mathbb{Z}$.The étale homology is the first quotient in the lower central series of the étale fundamental group.In this paper, we determine the structure of the graded Lie algebra for $π$. As a consequence, this determines the…
Let $F$ be a local non-Archimedean field with ring of integers $o$. Let $\bf X$ be a one-dimensional formal $o$-module of $F$-height $n$ over the algebraic closure of the residue field of $o$. By the work of Drinfeld, the universal deformation $X$ of $\bf X$ is a formal group over a power series ring $R_0$ in $n-1$ variables over the completion of the maximal unramified extension of $o$. For $h \in \{0,...,n-1\}$ let $U_h$ be the subscheme of $\Spec(R_0)$ where the connected part of the associated divisible module of $X$ has height $h$. Using the theory of Drinfeld level structures we show tha…
The cuspidalization conjecture, which is a consequence of Grothendieck's section conjecture, asserts that for any smooth hyperbolic curve $X$ over a finitely generated field $k$ of characteristic $0$ and any non empty Zariski open $U \subset X$, every section of $π_1 (X, \bar x) \to \mathrm{Gal}_k$ lifts to a section of $π_1 (U,\bar x) \to \mathrm{Gal}_k$. We consider in this article the problem of lifting Galois sections to the intermediate quotient $ π_1^{cc}(U)$ introduced by Mochizuki. We show that when $k = \mathbb Q$ and $D=X\setminus U$ is an union of torsion sub-packets every Galois se…
We prove the existence of two non-isomorphic number fields $K$ and $L$ such that the maximal two-step nilpotent quotients of their absolute Galois groups are isomorphic. In particular, one may take $K$ and $L$ to be any of the imaginary quadratic number fields of discriminant -11, -19, -43, -67, -163. Furthermore, we give an explicit combinatorial description of these Galois groups in terms of a generalization of the Rado graph. A critical ingredient in our proofs is the back-and-forth method from model theory.
We describe the Sylow subgroups of Gal(Q) for an odd prime p, by observing and studying their decomposition as a semidirect product of Z_p acting on F, where F is a free pro-p group, and Z_p are the p-adic integers. We determine the finite Z_p-quotients of F and more generally show that every split embedding problem of Z_p-groups for F is solvable. Moreover, we analyze the Z_p-action on generators of F.
For a fixed odd prime p and a representation ρof the absolute Galois group of Q into the projective group PGL(2,p), we provide the twisted modular curves whose rational points supply the quadratic Q-curves of degree N prime to p that realize ρthrough the Galois action on their p-torsion modules. The modular curve to twist is either the fiber product of the modular curves X_0(N) and X(p) or a certain quotient of Atkin-Lehner type, depending on the value of N mod p. For our purposes, a special care must be taken in fixing rational models for these modular curves and in studying their automorphis…
For $L/K$ a finite Galois extension of number fields, the relative Pólya group $\Po(L/K)$ coincides with the group of strongly ambiguous ideal classes in $L/K$. In this paper, using a well known exact sequence related to $\Po(L/K)$, in the works of Brumer-Rosen and Zantema, we find short proofs for some classical results in the literatur. Then we define the ``Ostrowski quotient'' $\Ost(L/K)$ as the cokernel of the capitulation map into $\Po(L/K)$, and generalize some known results for $\Po(L/\mathbb{Q})$ to $\Ost(L/K)$.
Let $N=pq$ be a product of two distinct primes. There is an isogeny $J_0(N)^{\rm new}\to J^N$ defined over $\mathbf{Q}$ between the new quotient of $J_0(N)$ and the Jacobian of the Shimura curve attached to the indefinite quaternion algebra of discriminant $N$. In the case when $p=2,3,5,7,13$, Ogg made predictions about the kernels of these isogenies. We show that Ogg's conjecture is not true in general. Afterwards, we propose a strategy for proving results toward Ogg's conjecture in certain situations. Finally, we discuss this strategy in detail for $N=5\cdot 13$.
Let p be a prime and F a field containing a primitive pth root of unity. Then for n in N, the cohomological dimension of the maximal pro-p-quotient G of the absolute Galois group of F is <=n if and only if the corestriction maps H^n(H,Fp) -> H^n(G,Fp) are surjective for all open subgroups H of index p. Using this result we derive a surprising generalization to dim_Fp H^n(H,Fp) of Schreier's formula for dim_Fp H^1(H,Fp).
In this article, we study a relation between certain quotients of ideal class groups and the cyclotomic Iwasawa module $X_\infty$ of the Pontrjagin dual of the fine Selmer group of an elliptic curve $E$ defined over $\mathbb{Q}$. We consider the Galois extension field $K^E_n$ of $\mathbb{Q}$ generated by coordinates of all $p^n$-torsion points of $E$, and introduce a quotient $A^E_n$ of the $p$-sylow subgroup of the ideal class group of $K^E_n$ cut out by the modulo $p^n$ Galois representation $E[p^n]$. We describe the asymptotic behavior of $A^E_n$ by using the Iwasawa module $X_\infty$. In p…
Let $\{ρ_\ell\}_\ell$ be the system of $\ell$-adic representations arising from the $i$th $\ell$-adic cohomology of a complete smooth variety $X$ defined over a number field $K$. Let $Γ_\ell$ and $\mathbf{G}_\ell$ be respectively the image and the algebraic monodromy group of $ρ_\ell$. We prove that the reductive quotient of $\mathbf{G}_\ell^\circ$ is unramified over every degree 12 totally ramified extension of $\mathbb{Q}_\ell$ for all sufficiently large $\ell$. We give a necessary and sufficient condition $(\ast)$ on $\{ρ_\ell\}_\ell$ such that for all sufficiently large $\ell$, the subgrou…
For each odd prime p>=5, there exist finite p-groups G with derived quotient G/D(G)=C(p)xC(p) and nearly constant transfer kernel type k(G)=(1,2,...,2) having two fixed points. It is proved that, for p=7, this type k(G) with the simplest possible case of logarithmic abelian quotient invariants t(G)=(11111,111,21,21,21,21,21,21) of the eight maximal subgroups is realized by exactly 98 non-metabelian Schur sigma-groups S of order 7^11 with fixed derived length dl(S)=3 and metabelianizations S/D(D(S)) of order 7^7. For p=5, the type k(G) with t(G)=(2111,111,21,21,21,21) leads to infinitely many n…
There are 3 examples in these notes. The first one is the standard example of the cubic resolvent of a quartic. The second example is exactly from Adelmann \cite{Adelmann} and gives a defining polynomial corresponding to the unique $S_4$-quotient of $\mathrm{GL}_2(\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z})$. The splitting field of the Adelmann polynomial over $\mathbb{Q}$ is a subfield of the 4-division field of an elliptic curve, that contains the 2-division field of the elliptic curve. The third example is new and needed in the study of the field theory of quaternion origami. Associated to an elliptic curve de…
Sect 1 introduces Nielsen classes attached to (G,C), where C is r conjugacy classes in a finite group G, and a braid action on them. These give reduced Hurwitz spaces, denoted H(G,C)^rd. The section concludes with a braid formula for the genus of these spaces when r = 4. If there is at least one prime l for which G is divisible by l, but has no Z/l quotient, then there is a canonical tower of reduced Hurwitz spaces over H(G,C)^rd, using the Universal Frattini cover, ~G, of G, and ~G_ab, its abelianized version. The towers are nonempty assuming C are l' classes satisfying a cohomological condit…
A powerful new perspective in the analysis of absolute Galois groups has recently emerged from the study of Galois modules related to classical parameterizing spaces of certain Galois extensions. The recurring trend in these decompositions is their stunning simplicity: almost all summands are free over some quotient ring. The non-free summands which appear are exceptional not only because they are different in form, but because they play the key role in controlling arithmetic conditions that allow the remaining summands to be easily described. In this way, these exceptional summands are the ly…
Let $F$ be the maximal totally real subfield of $\mathbf{Q}(ζ_{32})$, the cyclotomic field of $32$nd roots of unity. Let $D$ be the quaternion algebra over $F$ ramified exactly at the unique prime above $2$ and 7 of the real places of $F$. Let $\mathcal{O}$ be a maximal order in $D$, and $X_0^D(1)$ the Shimura curve attached to $\mathcal{O}$. Let $C = X_0^D(1)/\langle w_D \rangle$, where $w_D$ is the unique Atkin-Lehner involution on $X_0^D(1)$. We show that the curve $C$ has several striking features. First, it is a hyperelliptic curve of genus $16$, whose hyperelliptic involution is exceptio…
A connected reductive group G over a field k may be written as a quotient H/S, where the k-group H is an extension of a quasitrivial torus by a simply connected semisimple group, and S is a flasque k-torus, central in H (a flasque torus is a torus whose cocharacter group is an H^1-trivial Galois lattice). The flasque torus S is well-defined up to multiplication by a quasitrivial torus. Such presentations G=H/S lead to a simplified approach of the Galois cohomology of G and of related objects, such as the Brauer group of a smooth compactification of G. When k is a number field, one also recover…
The topic of this paper concerns a certain relation between the jacobians of various quotients of the modular curve $X(p)$, which relates the jacobian of the quotient of $X(p)$ by the normaliser of a non-split Cartan subgroup of $GL_2(F_p)$ to the jacobians of more standard modular curves. In this paper, we confirm a conjecture of Merel found in a paper of Darmon-Merel, "Winding quotients and some variants of Fermat's Last Theorem", Crelle, v. 490, p. 81-100, 1997, which describes this relation in terms of explicit correspondences. The method used is to reduce the conjecture to showing a certa…
Given an elliptic curve over a field $K$ of algebraic numbers, we associate with it an action of the absolute Galois group $G_K$ in the type $A_1$ rigid DAHA-modules at roots of unity $q$ and over the rings $Z[q^{1/4}]/(p^m)$ for sufficiently general prime $p$. We describe rigid modules in characteristic zero and for such rings. The main examples of rigid modules are generalized nonsymmetric Verlinde algebras; their deformations for arbitrary $q$ are constructed in this paper, which is of independent interest on its own. The Galois action preserves the images of the elliptic braid group in the…
Let Z{t} be the ring of arithmetic power series that converge on the complex open unit disc. A classical result of Harbater asserts that every finite group occurs as a Galois group over the quotient field of Z{t}. We strengthen this by showing that every finite split embedding problem over Q acquires a solution over this field. More generally, we solve all t-unramified finite split embedding problems over the quotient field of O{t}, where O is the ring of integers of an arbitrary number field K.
