A universal deformation ring with unexpected Krull dimension

Abstract

A well known result of B. Mazur gives a lower bound for the Krull dimension of the universal deformation ring associated to an absolutely irreducible residual representation in terms of the group cohomology of the adjoint representation. The question about equality - at least in the Galois case - also goes back to B. Mazur. In the general case the question about equality is the subject of Gouv\^{e}a's "Dimension conjecture". In this note we provide a counterexample to this conjecture. More precisely, we construct an absolutely irreducible residual representation with smooth universal deformation ring of strict greater Krull dimension as expected.