Galois theory of iterated endomorphisms

Given an abelian algebraic group $A$ over a global field $F$, $\alpha \in A(F)$, and a prime $\ell$, the set of all preimages of $\alpha$ under some iterate of $[\ell]$ generates an extension of $F$ that contains all $\ell$-power torsion points as well as a Kummer-type extension. We analyze the Galois group of this extension, and for several classes of $A$ we give a simple characterization of when the Galois group is as large as possible up to constraints imposed by the endomorphism ring or the Weil pairing. This Galois group encodes information about the density of primes \p in the ring of integers of $F$ such that the order of (\alpha \bmod{\p}) is prime to $\ell$. We compute this density in the general case for several classes of $A$, including elliptic curves and one-dimensional tori. For example, if $F$ is a number field, $A/F$ is an elliptic curve with surjective 2-adic representation and $\alpha \in A(F)$ with $\alpha \not\in 2A(F(A[4]))$, then the density of $\mathfrak{p}$ with (\alpha \bmod{\p}) having odd order is 11/21.Comment: 33 pages; The appendix has been updated, several examples have been redone, and a number of typos corrected. The paper has been accepted for publication in Proceedings of the London Mathematical Societ

The Explicit Sato-Tate Conjecture and Densities Pertaining to Lehmer-Type Questions

Let $f(z)=\sum_{n=1}^\infty a(n)q^n\in S^{\text{new}}_ k (\Gamma_0(N))$ be a newform with squarefree level $N$ that does not have complex multiplication. For a prime $p$, define $\theta_p\in[0,\pi]$ to be the angle for which $a(p)=2p^{( k -1)/2}\cos \theta_p$. Let $I\subset[0,\pi]$ be a closed subinterval, and let $d\mu_{ST}=\frac{2}{\pi}\sin^2\theta d\theta$ be the Sato-Tate measure of $I$. Assuming that the symmetric power $L$-functions of $f$ satisfy certain analytic properties (all of which follow from Langlands functoriality and the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis), we prove that if $x$ is sufficiently large, then $$\left|\#\{p\leq x:\theta_p\in I\} -\mu_{ST}(I)\int_2^x\frac{dt}{\log t}\right|\ll\frac{x^{3/4}\log(N k x)}{\log x}$$ with an implied constant of $3.34$. By letting $I$ be a short interval centered at $\frac{\pi}{2}$ and counting the primes using a smooth cutoff, we compute a lower bound for the density of positive integers $n$ for which $a(n)\neq0$. In particular, if $\tau$ is the Ramanujan tau function, then under the aforementioned hypotheses, we prove that $$\lim_{x\to\infty}\frac{\#\{n\leq x:\tau(n)\neq0\}}{x}>1-1.54\times10^{-13}.$$ We also discuss the connection between the density of positive integers $n$ for which $a(n)\neq0$ and the number of representations of $n$ by certain positive-definite, integer-valued quadratic forms.Comment: 29 pages. Significant revisions, including improvements in Theorems 1.2, 1.3, and 1.5 and a more detailed account of the contour integration, are included. Acknowledgements are update