Suppose that $\mathbf{G}$ is a connected reductive group over a finite extension $F/\mathbb{Q}_{p}$ and that $C$ is a field of characteristic $p$. We prove that the group $\mathbf{G}(F)$ admits an irreducible admissible supercuspidal, or equivalently supersingular, representation over $C$.

Suppose that $F/F^{+}$ is a CM extension of number fields in which the prime $p$ splits completely and every other prime is unramified. Fix a place $w|p$ of $F$. Suppose that $\overline{r}:\operatorname{Gal}(\overline{F}/F)\rightarrow \text{GL}_{3}(\overline{\mathbb{F}}_{p})$ is a continuous irreducible Galois representation such that $\overline{r}|_{\operatorname{Gal}(\overline{F}_{w}/F_{w})}$ is upper-triangular, maximally non-split, and generic. If $\overline{r}$ is automorphic, and some suitable technical conditions hold, we show that $\overline{r}|_{\operatorname{Gal}(\overline{F}_{w}/F_{w})}$ can be recovered from the $\text{GL}_{3}(F_{w})$-action on a space of mod $p$ automorphic forms on a compact unitary group. On the way we prove results about weights in Serre’s conjecture for $\overline{r}$, show the existence of an ordinary lifting of $\overline{r}$, and prove the freeness of certain Taylor–Wiles patched modules in this context. We also show the existence of many Galois representations $\overline{r}$ to which our main theorem applies.

Suppose that G is a connected reductive group over a p-adic field F, that K is a hyperspecial maximal compact subgroup of G(F), and that V is an irreducible representation of K over the algebraic closure of the residue field of F. We establish an analogue of the Satake isomorphism for the Hecke algebra of compactly supported,K-biequivariant functions f:G(F)→End   V. These Hecke algebras were first considered by Barthel and Livné for GL 2. They play a role in the recent mod p andp-adic Langlands correspondences for GL 2 (ℚp) , in generalisations of Serre’s conjecture on the modularity of mod p Galois representations, and in the classification of irreducible mod p representations of unramified p-adic reductive groups.