On elliptic curves of prime power conductor over imaginary quadratic fields with class number 1

Abstract

The main result of this paper is to extend from Q to each of the nine imaginary quadratic fields of class number 1 a result of [Serre, Duke Math. J. 54 (1987) 179–230] and [Mestre–Oesterlé, J. reine. angew. Math 400 (1989) 173–184], namely that if E is an elliptic curve of prime conductor, then either E or a 2-, 3- or 5-isogenous curve has prime discriminant. For four of the nine fields, the theorem holds with no change, while for the remaining five fields the discriminant of a curve with prime conductor is (up to isogeny) either prime or the square of a prime. The proof is conditional in two ways: first that the curves are modular, so are associated to suitable Bianchi newforms; and second that a certain level-lowering conjecture holds for Bianchi newforms. We also classify all elliptic curves of prime power conductor and non-trivial torsion over each of the nine fields: in the case of 2-torsion, we find that such curves either have CM or with a small finite number of exceptions arise from a family analogous to the Setzer–Neumann family over Q.