The Manin constant and the modular degree
The Manin constant $c$ of an elliptic curve $E$ over $\mathbb{Q}$ is the nonzero integer that scales the differential $ω_f$ determined by the normalized newform $f$ associated to $E$ into the pullback of a Néron differential under a minimal parametrization $ϕ\colon X_0(N)_{\mathbb{Q}} \twoheadrightarrow E$. Manin conjectured that $c = \pm 1$ for optimal parametrizations, and we prove that in general $c \mid \mathrm{deg}(ϕ)$ under a minor assumption at $2$ and $3$ that is not needed for cube-free $N$ or for parametrizations by $X_1(N)_{\mathbb{Q}}$. Since $c$ is supported at the additive reduction primes, which need not divide $\mathrm{deg}(ϕ)$, this improves the status of the Manin conjecture for many $E$. Our core result that gives this divisibility is the containment $ω_f \in H^0(X_0(N), Ω)$, which we establish by combining automorphic methods with techniques from arithmetic geometry; here the modular curve $X_0(N)$ is considered over $\mathbb{Z}$ and $Ω$ is its relative dualizing sheaf over $\mathbb{Z}$. We reduce this containment to $p$-adic bounds on denominators of the Fourier expansions of $f$ at all the cusps of $X_0(N)_{\mathbb{C}}$ and then use the recent basic identity for the $p$-adic Whittaker newform to establish stronger bounds in the more general setup of newforms of weight $k$ on $X_0(N)$. To overcome obstacles at $2$ and $3$, we analyze nondihedral supercuspidal representations of $\mathrm{GL}_2(\mathbb{Q}_2)$ and exhibit new cases in which $X_0(N)_{\mathbb{Z}}$ has rational singularities.