Irreducibility of limits of Galois representations of Saito–Kurokawa type

Abstract

We prove (under certain assumptions) the irreducibility of the limit $$\sigma _2$$ σ 2 of a sequence of irreducible essentially self-dual Galois representations $$\sigma _k: G_{{\mathbf {Q}}} \rightarrow {{\,\mathrm{GL}\,}}_4(\overline{{\mathbf {Q}}}_p)$$ σ k : G Q → GL 4 ( Q ¯ p ) (as k approaches 2 in a p-adic sense) which mod p reduce (after semi-simplifying) to $$1 \oplus \rho \oplus \chi $$ 1 ⊕ ρ ⊕ χ with $$\rho $$ ρ irreducible, two-dimensional of determinant $$\chi $$ χ , where $$\chi $$ χ is the mod p cyclotomic character. More precisely, we assume that $$\sigma _k$$ σ k are crystalline (with a particular choice of weights) and Siegel-ordinary at p. Such representations arise in the study of p-adic families of Siegel modular forms and properties of their limits as $$k\rightarrow 2$$ k → 2 appear to be important in the context of the Paramodular Conjecture. The result is deduced from the finiteness of two Selmer groups whose order is controlled by p-adic L-values of an elliptic modular form (giving rise to $$\rho $$ ρ ) which we assume are non-zero.