Galois level and congruence ideal for $p$-adic families of finite slope Siegel modular forms

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Galois representations associated with $p$-adic families of finite slope Siegel modular forms of genus 2, establishing conditions for their image size, and exploring automorphic descriptions of special loci related to symmetric cube residual representations.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of Galois level for these families, relates it to congruence ideals, and describes the automorphic nature of loci where the Galois level is non-trivial, especially for symmetric cube residuals.

Findings

Galois image is large when residual representation has full image.

Galois level is trivial for full residual image, non-trivial for symmetric cube residuals.

Automorphic description of the zero locus of Galois level via $p$-adic Langlands lifts.

Abstract

We consider $p$-adic families of Siegel eigenforms of genus $2$ and finite slope, defined as local pieces of an eigenvariety and equipped with a suitable integral structure. Under some assumptions on the residual image, we show that the image of the Galois representation associated with a family is big, in the sense that a Lie algebra attached to it contains a congruence subalgebra of non-zero level. We call Galois level of the family the largest such level. We show that it is trivial when the residual representation has full image. When the residual representation is a symmetric cube, the zero locus defined by the Galois level of the family admits an automorphic description: it is the locus of points that arise from overconvergent eigenforms for $\mathrm{GL}_2$, via a $p$-adic Langlands lift attached to the symmetric cube representation. Our proof goes via the comparison of the Galois level with a "fortuitous" congruence ideal, that describes the zero- and one-dimensional subvarieties of symmetric cube type appearing in the family. We show that some of the $p$-adic lifts are interpolated by a morphism of rigid analytic spaces from an eigencurve for $\mathrm{GL}_2$ to an eigenvariety for $\mathrm{GSp}_4$. The remaining lifts appear as isolated points on the eigenvariety.