Romyar Sharifi has constructed a map $\varpi _M$ from the first homology of the modular curve $X_1(M)$ to the K-group $K_2(\operatorname {\mathrm {\mathbf {Z}}}[\zeta _M+\zeta _M^{-1}, \frac {1}{M}]) \otimes \operatorname {\mathrm {\mathbf {Z}}}[1/2]$, where $\zeta _M$ is a primitive Mth root of unity. Sharifi conjectured that $\varpi _M$ is annihilated by a certain Eisenstein ideal. Fukaya and Kato proved this conjecture after tensoring with $\operatorname {\mathrm {\mathbf {Z}}}_p$ for a prime $p\geq 5$ dividing M. More recently, Sharifi and Venkatesh proved the conjecture for Hecke operators away from M. In this note, we prove two main results. First, we give a relation between $\varpi _M$ and $\varpi _{M'}$ when $M' \mid M$. Our method relies on the techniques developed by Sharifi and Venkatesh. We then use this result in combination with results of Fukaya and Kato in order to get the Eisenstein property of $\varpi _M$ for Hecke operators of index dividing M.

Let p and $\ell $ be primes such that $p> 3$ and $p \mid \ell -1$ and k be an even integer. We use deformation theory of pseudo-representations to study the completion of the Hecke algebra acting on the space of cuspidal modular forms of weight k and level $\Gamma _0(\ell )$ at the maximal Eisenstein ideal containing p. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the $\mathbb {Z}_p$-rank of this Hecke algebra to be greater than $1$ in terms of vanishing of the cup products of certain global Galois cohomology classes. We also recover some of the results proven by Wake and Wang-Erickson for $k=2$ using our methods. In addition, we prove some $R=\mathbb {T}$ theorems under certain hypotheses.