We prove many simultaneous congruences mod 2 for elliptic and Hilbert modular forms among forms with different Atkin–Lehner eigenvalues. The proofs involve the notion of quaternionic $S$-ideal classes and the distribution of Atkin–Lehner signs among newforms.

We show that over any field $F$ of characteristic 2 and 2-rank $n$, there exist $2^{n}$ bilinear $n$-fold Pfister forms that have no slot in common. This answers a question of Becher [‘Triple linkage’, Ann.$K$-Theory, to appear] in the negative. We provide an analogous result also for quadratic Pfister forms.

We determine the Galois representations inside the $\ell$-adic cohomology of some quaternionic and related unitary Shimura varieties at ramified places. The main results generalize the previous works of Reimann and Kottwitz in this setting to arbitrary levels at $p$, and confirm the expected description of the cohomology due to Langlands and Kottwitz.

We study the possible weights of an irreducible two-dimensional mod p representation of which is modular in the sense that it comes from an automorphic form on a definite quaternion algebra with centre F which is ramified at all places dividing p, where F is a totally real field. In most cases we determine the precise list of possible weights; in the remaining cases we determine the possible weights up to a short and explicit list of exceptions.