Wild Galois Representations

Let C be an elliptic or hyperelliptic curve over a p-adic field K. Then C is equipped with a Galois representation, given by the action of the absolute Galois group of K on the Tate module of C. The behaviour of this representation depends on the reduction type of C. We will focus on the case of C having bad reduction, and acquiring potentially good reduction over a wildly ramified extension of K. We will show that, if C is an elliptic curve, the Galois representation can be completely determined in this case, thus allowing one to fully classify Galois representations attached to elliptic curves. Furthermore, the same can be done for a special family of hyperelliptic curves, obtaining a result which is surprisingly similar to that for the corresponding elliptic curves case.