Eisenstein Hecke algebras and conjectures in Iwasawa theory (Q2018349)

The present work is to continue the author's previous paper [J. Reine Angew. Math. 700, 113--128 (2015; Zbl 1325.11116)]. The author studies the relationship between the Iwasawa theory of cyclotomic fields and certain ring-theoretic properties of the Hecke algebra acting on modular forms. The philosophy of his work is that simplicity of the Iwasawa theory should correspond to simplicity of Hecke algebras. This philosophy comes from remarkable conjectures formulated by \textit{R. Sharifi} [Ann. Math. (2) 173, No. 1, 251--300 (2011; Zbl 1248.11085)]. In [loc. cit.], the author proved under some assumptions, that if the Hecke algebra for modular forms is Gorenstein, then the plus part of the corresponding ideal class group is zero. In particular, he gave an example to show that this Hecke algebra is not always Gorenstein. Since the Hecke algebra is not always Gorenstein, it is natural to ask if there is a weaker ring-theoretic property that we can expect the Hecke algebra to have. In the paper under review, he formulates such a weaker property based on whether certain localizations of the Hecke algebra are Gorenstein. In a vague sense, we can consider this condition on as something like ``the obstructions to Gorenstein-ness are finite''. He show that this weak Gorenstein property holds if and only if a weak form of Sharifi's conjecture and a weak form of Greenberg's conjecture both hold. In particular, the weak Gorenstein property holds in every known example.