Entanglement of elliptic curves upon base extension

Tori Day, Rylan Gajek-Leonard

Published 2024-03-05, updated 2025-01-27Version 2

Fix distinct primes $p$ and $q$ and let $E$ be an elliptic curve defined over a number field $K$. The $(p,q)$-entanglement type of $E$ over $K$ is the isomorphism class of the group $\operatorname{Gal}(K(E[p])\cap K(E[q])/K)$. The size of this group measures the extent to which the image of the mod $pq$ Galois representation attached to $E$ fails to be a direct product of the mod $p$ and mod $q$ images. In this article, we study how the $(p,q)$-entanglement group varies over different base fields. We prove that for each prime $\ell$ dividing the greatest common divisor of the size of the mod $p$ and $q$ images, there are infinitely many fields $L/K$ such that the entanglement over $L$ is cyclic of order $\ell$. We also classify all possible $(2,q)$-entanglement types that can occur as the base field $L$ varies.