Ring Theoretic Properties of Certain Hecke Algebras

In the work of one of us (A.W.) on the conjecture that all elliptic curves defined over Q are modular, the importance of knowing that certain Hecke algebras are complete intersections was established. The purpose of this article is to provide the missing ingredient in [W2] by establishing that the Hecke algebras considered there are complete intersections. As is recorded in [W2], a method going back to Mazur [M] allows one to show that these algebras are Gorenstein, but this seems to be too weak for the purposes of that paper. The methods of this paper are related to those of chapter 3 of [W2]. We would like to thank Henri Darmon, Fred Diamond and Gerd Faltings for carefully reading the first version of this article. Gerd Faltings has also suggested a simplification of our argument and we would like to thank him for allowing us to reproduce this in the appendix to this paper. R.T. would like to thank A.W. for his invitation to collaborate on these problems and for sharing his many insights into the questions considered. R.T. would also like to thank Princeton University, Université de Paris 7 and Harvard University for their hospitality during some of the work on this paper. A.W. was supported by an NSF grant.