On Shafarevich-Tate groups and analytic ranks in families of modular forms, I. Hida families

Let $f$ be a newform of weight $2$, square-free level and trivial character, let $A_f$ be the abelian variety attached to $f$ and for every good ordinary prime $p$ for $f$ let ${\mathit{f}}^{(p)}$ be the $p$-adic Hida family through $f$. We prove that, for all but finitely many primes $p$ as above, if $A_f$ is an elliptic curve such that $A_f(\mathbb{Q})$ has rank $1$ and the $p$-primary part of the Shafarevich-Tate group of $A_f$ over $\mathbb{Q}$ is finite then all specializations of ${\mathit{f}}^{(p)}$ of weight congruent to $2$ modulo $2(p-1)$ and trivial character have finite ($p$-primary) Shafarevich-Tate group and $1$-dimensional image of the relevant $p$-adic 'etale Abel-Jacobi map. Analogous results are obtained also in the rank $0$ case. As a second contribution, with no restriction on the dimension of $A_f$ but assuming the non-degeneracy of certain height pairings `a la Gillet-Soul'e between Heegner cycles, we show that if $f$ has analytic rank $1$ then, for all but finitely many $p$, all specializations of ${\mathit{f}}^{(p)}$ of weight congruent to $2$ modulo $2(p-1)$ and trivial character have analytic rank $1$. This result provides some evidence in rank $1$ and weight larger than $2$ for a conjecture of Greenberg predicting that the analytic ranks of even weight modular forms in a Hida family should be as small as allowed by the functional equation, with at most finitely many exceptions.