The main result of this paper is a characterization of the abelian varieties $B/K$ defined over Galois number fields with the property that the $L$-function $L(B/K;s)$ is a product of $L$-functions of non-CM newforms over $\mathbb Q$ for congruence subgroups of the form $\Gamma_1(N)$. The characterization involves the structure of $\operatorname{End}(B)$, isogenies between the Galois conjugates of $B$, and a Galois cohomology class attached to $B/K$. We call the varieties having this property strongly modular. The last section is devoted to the study of a family of abelian surfaces with quaternionic multiplication. As an illustration of the ways in which the general results of the paper can be applied we prove the strong modularity of some particular abelian surfaces belonging to that family, and we show how to find nontrivial examples of strongly modular varieties by twisting.

We construct a bipartite Euler system in the sense of Howard for Hilbert modular eigenforms of parallel weight two over totally real fields, generalizing works of Bertolini-Darmon, Longo, Nekovar, Pollack-Weston and others. The construction has direct applications to Iwasawa main conjectures. For instance, it implies in many cases one divisibility of the associated dihedral or anticyclotomic main conjecture, at the same time reducing the other divisibility to a certain nonvanishing criterion for the associated $p$-adic $L$-functions. It also has applications to cyclotomic main conjectures for Hilbert modular forms over CM fields via the technique of Skinner and Urban.

In this article we refine the method of Bertolini and Darmon and prove several finiteness results for anticyclotomic Selmer groups of Hilbert modular forms of parallel weight two.

We discuss a clean level lowering theorem modulo prime powers for weight $2$ cusp forms. Furthermore, we illustrate how this can be used to completely solve certain twisted Fermat equations $ax^n+by^n+cz^n=0$.