Cyclicity of the unramified Iwasawa module

For a number field k and a prime number p, let k _?? be the cyclotomic Z _p -extension of k with finite layers k _n . We study the finiteness of the Galois group X _?? over k _?? of the maximal abelian unramified p-extension of k _?? when it is assumed to be cyclic. We then focus our attention to the case where p?=?2 and k is a real quadratic field and give the rank of the 2-primary part of the class group of k _n . As a consequence, we determine the complete list of real quadratic number fields for which X _?? is cyclic non trivial. We then apply these results to the study of Greenberg??s conjecture for infinite families of real quadratic fields thus generalizing previous results obtained by Ozaki and Taya.