The density of odd order reductions for elliptic curves with a rational point of order 2

Abstract

Suppose that $E/\mathbb{Q}$ is an elliptic curve with a rational point $T$ of order $2$ and $\alpha \in E(\mathbb{Q})$ is a point of infinite order. We consider the problem of determining the density of primes $p$ for which $\alpha \in E(\mathbb{F}_{p})$ has odd order. This density is determined by the image of the arboreal Galois representation $\tau_{E,2^{k}} : {\rm Gal}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}/\mathbb{Q}) \to {\rm AGL}_{2}(\mathbb{Z}/2^{k}\mathbb{Z})$. Assuming that $\alpha$ is primitive (that is, neither $\alpha$ nor $\alpha + T$ is twice a point over $\mathbb{Q}$) and that the image of the ordinary mod $2^{k}$ Galois representation is as large as possible (subject to $E$ having a rational point of order $2$), we determine that there are $63$ possibilities for the image of $\tau_{E,2^{k}}$. As a consequence, the density of primes $p$ for which the order of $\alpha$ is odd is between $1/14$ and $89/168$.