On modular Galois representations modulo prime powers

Abstract: We study modular Galois representations mod $p^m$. We show that there are three progressively weaker notions of modularity for a Galois representation mod $p^m$: we have named these strongly',weakly', and dc-weakly' modular. Here,dc' stands for divided congruence' in the sense of Katz and Hida. These notions of modularity are relative to a fixed level $M$. Using results of Hida we display astripping-of-powers of $p$ away from the level' type of result: A mod $p^m$ strongly modular representation of some level $Np^r$ is always dc-weakly modular of level $N$ (here, $N$ is a natural number not divisible by $p$). We also study eigenforms mod $p^m$ corresponding to the above three notions. Assuming residual irreducibility, we utilize a theorem of Carayol to show that one can attach a Galois representation mod $p^m$ to any `dc-weak' eigenform, and hence to any eigenform mod $p^m$ in any of the three senses. We show that the three notions of modularity coincide when $m=1$ (as well as in other, particular cases), but not in general.