On the local-global principle for twists of abelian varieties and Galois representations

Abstract

This paper investigates the validity of a local-global principle for finite twists of a large class of objects endowed with a continuous action of the absolute Galois group of a given number field, such as abelian varieties, modular forms and Galois representations. Our aim is to determine when, for $m$ a positive integer, twists that are given locally by characters of order $m$ are realised by a global character of the same order. We define and study a ``Tate--Shafarevich cohomology set'' that governs the obstruction to the local-global principle for $m$-atic twists and we prove that this set is finite. Finally, we apply our results and prove several instances of the local-global principle in various examples.

Extended results, in particular the unconditional proof of the finiteness of Sha