Elliptic Curves and Big Galois Representations

The arithmetic properties of modular forms and elliptic curves lie at the heart of modern number theory. This book develops a generalisation of the method of Euler systems to a two-variable deformation ring. The resulting theory is then used to study the arithmetic of elliptic curves, in particular the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer (BSD) formula. Three main steps are outlined: the first is to parametrise 'big' cohomology groups using (deformations of) modular symbols. Finiteness results for big...