Elliptic curves with non-abelian entanglements

Abstract

We consider the problem of classifying quadruples $(K,E,m_1,m_2)$ where $K$ is a number field, $E$ is an elliptic curve defined over $K$ and $(m_1,m_2)$ is a pair of relatively prime positive integers for which the intersection $K(E[m_1]) \cap K(E[m_2])$ is a non-abelian extension of $K$. There is an infinite set $\mathcal{S}$ of modular curves whose $K$-rational points capture all elliptic curves over $K$ without complex multiplication that have this property. Our main theorem explicitly describes the (finite) subset of $\mathcal{S}$ consisting of those modular curves having genus zero. In the case $K = \mathbb{Q}$, this has applications to the problem of determining when the Galois representation on the torsion of $E$ is as large as possible modulo a prescribed obstruction; we illustrate this application with a specific example.