Higher Congruences Between Modular Forms

In his seminal work on modular curves and the Eisenstein ideal, Mazur studied the existence of congruences between certain Eisenstein series and newforms, proving that Eisenstein ideals associated to weight 2 cusp forms of prime level are locally principal. In this dissertation, we re-examine Eisenstein congruences, incorporating a notion of “depth of congruence,” in order to understand the local structure of Eisenstein ideals associated to weight 2 cusp forms of squarefree level N. Specifically, we use a commutative algebra result of Berger, Klosin, and Kramer to bound the depth of mod p Eisenstein congruences (from below) by the p-adic valuation of φ(N). We then show how this depth of congruence controls the local principality of the associated Eisenstein ideal