On congruences of Galois representations of number fields

Abstract

We give a criterion for two l-adic Galois representations of an algebraic number field to be isomorphic when restricted to a decomposition group, in terms of the global representations mod l. This is applied to prove a generalization of a conjecture of Rasmussen-Tamagawa under a semistablity condition, extending some results of one of the authors. It is also applied to prove a congruence result on the Fourier coefficients of modular forms.