Slope classicality via completed cohomology

Abstract

We give a new proof of the slope classicality theorem in classical and higher Coleman theory for modular curves at arbitrary level using the completed cohomology classes attached to overconvergent modular forms. The latter give an embedding of the quotient of overconvergent modular forms by classical modular forms, which is the obstruction space for classicality in either cohomological degree, into a unitary representation of $\mathrm{GL}_2(\mathbb{Q}_p)$. The $U_p$ operator becomes a double-coset, and unitarity yields the slope vanishing.