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# Redshifted 21 cm Emission From the Pre-Reionization Era I. Mean Signal and Linear Fluctuations

## 1 Introduction

The importance of the $`21\text{ cm}`$ line of neutral hydrogen has long been recognized for its potential in studying the reionization of the universe. This possibility has been emphasized many times in a large volume of previous research, beginning with the pioneering work of Sunyaev & Zel’dovich (1972), through the first application of this idea to the modern scenario of galaxy formation by Scott & Rees (1990), to the recent detailed investigations (Madau, Meiksin, & Rees 1997; Gnedin & Ostriker 1997; Shaver et al. 1999; Tozzi et al. 2000; Di Matteo et al. 2002; Iliev et al. 2002; Ciardi & Madau 2003; Iliev et al. 2003; Furlanetto, Sokasian, & Hernquist 2004; Oh & Mack 2004, Zaldarriaga, Furlanetto, & Hernquist 2004).

The shape and strength of the $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal is ultimately connected to the process of reionization of the universe. As numerical simulations of reionization (Gnedin 2000; Ciardi, Stoehr, White 2003; Sokasian et al. 2003; Ciardi, Ferrara, & White 2003) become more detailed and precise, it becomes possible to construct detailed reionization histories of the universe that are consistent with recent observational data such as the Lyman-alpha flux decrement in the IGM up to $`z6`$, and which, therefore, can be used to make quantitative predictions about the expected $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal.

The difficulty of measuring the $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal is not so much its weakness as the overwhelming contamination from galactic and extragalactic foregrounds (Shaver et al. 1999; Di Matteo et al. 2002; Oh & Mack 2004) at these frequencies ($`\nu 100200\text{ MHz}`$). So the question of the observability of the signal - which includes both the mean signal over the whole sky and fluctuations in both the angular and frequency domains - is the question of separating the cosmological signal from the foreground contamination.

In this paper we consider the widespread fluctuations in the $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal caused by the (linear) density fluctuations in the cosmic gas. Additional fluctuations in the $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal can also appear in special regions, such as individual H II regions around possible rare bright high redshift quasars (Madau et al. 1997); this topic will be the subject of a forthcoming paper. But even if the signal from the vicinities of high redshift quasars is more easily measurable, observations of quasars do not substitute for the search for linear density fluctuations. Observing signatures of quasars in the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal will tell us important information about the very first AGNs in the universe, but they will not provide the kind of information that can be extracted from the measurement of linear fluctuations.

For example, measuring the amplitude of the linear density fluctuations at $`z10`$ provides information about the evolution of the matter power spectrum at redshifts intermediate between those probed by the CMB ($`z1000`$) and those probed by galaxy surveys ($`z1`$). Such information will be important in placing complimentary constraints on cosmological parameters and the evolution of the cosmic equation of state.

## 2 Simulations

Since our goal is to investigate the observability of the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ line from the early universe, we need a plausible model for the evolution of the physical state of the cosmic gas at that epoch. We use numerical simulations with the Softened Lagrangian Hydrodynamics (SLH) code similar to those reported in Gnedin (2000). The advantage of using the SLH code is that it incorporates all of the important physical processes that affect the reionization of the universe and the emission and absorption in the $`21\text{ cm}`$ line:

is followed using the adaptive Particle-Particle-Particle-Mesh (P3M) algorithm (Gnedin & Bertschinger 1996).

is followed on a quasi-Lagrangian deformable mesh using the SLH algorithm.

is included using the Schmidt law in resolution elements that sink below the numerical resolution of the code.

of the hydrogen and helium plasma are followed exactly using a two-level implicit scheme.

formation and destruction are followed exactly (including radiative transfer effects) in the limit when the fraction of hydrogen in the molecular form is small and the self-shielding of $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ is unimportant. (The latter is always the case in the simulation presented in this paper because the numerical resolution is not sufficient to resolve the formation of molecular clouds.)

is treated self-consistently in a 3D spatially-inhomogeneous and time-dependent manner using the Optically Thin Variable Eddington Tensor (OTVET) approximation of Gnedin & Abel (2001).

The SLH code also incorporates two important physical effects that were emphasized by Madau, Meiksin, & Rees (1997): heating by X-ray halos around galaxies and heating by secondary electrons. The first effect is included automatically by virtue of using the gas dynamical simulation, while the second effect is incorporated explicitly in the code as explained in (Ricotti, Gnedin & Shull 2003).

Our knowledge of the evolution of the early universe is sketchy at best. Therefore, in order to cover a sufficient parameter space, both in terms of the cosmological parameters and possible variations in the relative importance of different physical processes, we have run several different sets of cosmological simulations.

Star formation is incorporated in the simulations using a phenomenological Schmidt law, which introduces two free parameters: the star formation efficiency $`ϵ_{\mathrm{SF}}`$ (as defined by eq.  of Gnedin 2000) and the ionizing radiation efficiency $`ϵ_{\mathrm{UV}}`$ (defined as the energy in ionizing photons per unit of the rest energy of stellar particles).

Each set of simulations includes several runs with different values of these parameters, and two pieces of observational data are used to constrain the parameters. The star formation efficiency $`ϵ_{\mathrm{SF}}`$ is chosen so as to normalize the global star formation rate in the simulation at $`z=4`$ to the observed value from Steidel et al. (2001), and the ultraviolet radiation efficiency $`ϵ_{\mathrm{UV}}`$ is constrained by the condition that the simulation reproduces the mean transmitted flux in the Lyman-alpha forest at $`z6`$ as measured by White et al. (2003).

Parameters of the four sets of simulations that we use in this paper are given in Table 1. All simulations include $`128^3`$ dark matter particles, an equal number of baryonic cells on a quasi-Lagrangian moving mesh, and about 3 million stellar particles that form continuously during the simulation111Stellar particles sample the phase space density of the stellar component; they do not represent individual stars or star clusters., with the exception of the set D, in which only $`64^3`$ dark matter particles and baryonic cells are used - the latter set includes several simulations with varied physical modeling, as explained below, which makes it impractical to include a larger number of resolution elements. The nominal spatial resolution of simulations is fixed at $`1h^1`$ comoving kpc, with the real resolution being a factor of two lower.

In all cases a flat cosmology is assumed, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{\Lambda },0}=1\mathrm{\Omega }_{m,0}`$, and normalization of the primordial fluctuations is determined either from the WMAP data (Spergel et al. 2003) for set A, or from the COBE data (White & Bunn 1995) for the other three sets.

Given a simulation, we calculate the relative populations of hyperfine levels of neutral hydrogen, taking into account the effects that determine the level populations at high redshift: Lyman-alpha pumping and collisions with both electrons and hydrogen atoms (Tozzi et al. 2000). We then generate synthetic spectra at different points on the simulated sky, and average them appropriately (depending on the observation modeled), which provides us with the most accurate computation of the emission signal, including velocity focusing.

It is interesting to look at the physical effects that might control the characteristics of the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ emission. Simulations are the ideal tool to make such a study, because they offer complete control over their physical ingredients, as is demonstrated in Figure 1.

Our fiducial model includes all relevant physical effects, and assumes that sources of ionization have a stellar spectrum (see Gnedin 2000 for details). The prediction of the fiducial simulation from set D that best fits the mean transmitted Lyman-alpha flux data at $`z6`$ for the mean (averaged over the whole sky) $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal is shown in Figure 1 with a black solid line.

There are several features in this curve. The curve starts to deviate from zero at $`z15`$ \- this is the moment when the first sources of Lyman-alpha radiation begin to form in the simulation. The Lyman-alpha photons couple the level population of the hyperfine transition in neutral hydrogen to the kinetic temperature of the gas (c.f. Tozzi et al. 2000) and drive them out of equilibrium with the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Because initially most of the gas in the universe is colder than the CMB, the signal is seen as absorption against the CMB. By $`z12`$, the mean gas temperature has however risen above the CMB temperature (the specific source of this heating is discussed in the following paragraphs), so the $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal switches from absorption to emission. At $`z10`$ the ionization fronts in our fiducial model start to expand in the low density IGM, which occupies most of the volume of the universe and at $`z10`$ still contains most of the mass. This process results in a progressively larger fraction of neutral hydrogen being ionized and a progressively lower $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal, until, finally, the universe is fully reionized by $`z6`$ (in accord with the SDSS observations, White et al. 2003), and the $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal becomes unmeasurably small.

The characteristic transition from absorption to emission at $`z1112`$ is controlled by the heating of the cosmic gas. What is the primary source of gas heating? Using the simulations from the set D, we have investigated the role of various physical effects on the shape of the cosmological $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal. The advantage of using simulations is that we can switch various physical effects on and off at will. For example, the dotted line in Fig. 1 shows the brightness temperature evolution for the simulation, in which we do not include the heating by recoil of Lyman-alpha photons in the temperature equation for the cosmic gas. As one can see, the effect of Lyman-alpha recoil is not significant in our fiducial model. This conclusion fully agrees with Chen & Miralda-Escudé (2003).

In the further exploration of importance of various physical effects, we show with the short-dashed line in Fig. 1 out fiducial model, but with both Lyman-alpha heating and heating by X-rays excluded. i.e. all sources are assumed to emit no radiation above $`4\text{ Ry}`$. As can be seen, X-rays have a substantial effect on the evolution of the excess brightness temperature at $`15>z>9`$ (in this particular cosmological model). Thus, early X-rays play a major role in the evolution of the IGM temperature, as has been emphasized earlier by Madau et al. (1997), Tozzi et al. (2000), and Chen & Miralda-Escudé (2003).

In the third simulation we have excluded the shock heating as well (in addition to Lyman-alpha heating and X-ray heating). In other words, we only allowed photoionization heating as the single source of heating of the gas in that simulation. The result of that simulation is shown as a long-dashed line in Fig. 1. This change makes a dramatic difference - most of the gas heating at high redshifts is due to shocks (i.e. structure formation). However, the cosmological parameters are thought to be sufficiently well known (Tegmark et al. 2004) that uncertainties in the shock heating rate are not dominant.

To further illustrate the role of X-rays in controlling the $`21\text{ cm}`$ emission at high redshifts, we show with the solid grey line a simulation in which all sources of ionization have a hard, quasar-like spectrum, rather than a stellar spectrum as in the fiducial model. In that case there is almost no stage in which the the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ line appears in absorption, because the gas heating is extremely efficient. Finally, the dashed grey line shows the same model with secondary electrons included. The conclusion we draw from Fig. 1 is that the details of the early absorption phase in the $`21\text{ cm}`$ emission and the transition from absorption to emission depend on details of the early universe physics, and, therefore, can be used as a powerful test of the first episode of galaxy formation. On the other hand, the observed evolution of the mean transmitted flux in the hydrogen Lyman-alpha line (White et al. 2003) strongly constrains the late stages of the reionization process and the predicted $`21\text{ cm}`$ emission for redshifts less than about 9. In the rest of this paper, we focus on this late reionization stage when we need a robust estimate of the cosmological $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal.

Finally, in a further exploration of various physical effects responsible for the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ emission, we show in Figure 2, at the request of the referee, evolution of the mass-weighted average coupling efficiency $`y`$, which is defined via the following equation:

$$T_S=\frac{T_{\mathrm{CMB}}+yT_K}{1+y},$$
(1)
where $`T_K`$ is the gas kinetic temperature, and $`T_S`$ is the spin temperature of the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ line. Three independent physical processes make contributions to $`y`$: pumping by Lyman-$`\alpha `$ photons, and collisions with neutral atoms and free electrons (Madau et al. 1997; Tozzi et al. 2000), which are shown with different lines in Fig. 2. As one can see, the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ pumping dominates over the other two mechanisms for $`z8`$, in agreement with Madau et al. (1997), but even Lyman-$`\alpha `$ pumping becomes significant ($`y>1`$) only at $`z15`$ (in our fiducial model), when shock heating already dominates by a large margin.

An important conclusion of this demonstration is that the approximately linear decrease in the brightness temperature with frequency in the range $`150\text{ MHz}\nu 200\text{ MHz}`$ is robust; it is a manifestation of the reionization of the universe - the drop in the signal is simply due to neutral hydrogen atoms becoming ionized.

## 3 Mean Signal

The first possible observable we consider is the mean (or global) emission in the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ line, averaged over the whole sky (as we explain below, in practice this means signals on scales above about 2 degrees).

Figure 3 shows the mean excess brightness temperature as a function of frequency and redshift for the simulation sets A, B, and C, and the resulting change in the spectral index of the total emission (including the galactic and extra-galactic foreground). We used the model of Shaver et al. (1999) for the foreground component in the bottom panel of Fig. 3, which includes galactic thermal and non-thermal components, and extragalactic sources. We also show an estimate of the $`\pm 5\sigma `$ sensitivity limit for a 10-day integration time for a system temperature of $`200\text{ K}`$ (this limit is independent of telescope size), as given by equation (6) of Shaver et al. (1999).

The three theoretical curves in Fig. 3 show the possible spread in the predicted values when variations in cosmological parameters are allowed. The predicted variation in the spectral index is well above the sensitivity limits, and it is clear from both panels of Fig. 3 that sensitivity is not an issue in the detection of the H I signal. The issue is how well the signal can be distinguished from the varying foreground spectrum. (Calibration and radio interference are of course also major concerns, and we address the reader to Shaver et al. (1999) for a discussion of these technical matters.)

The difference in the spectral index between the prediction for the total signal (the cosmological signal plus foreground emission) is easily distinguishable from the foreground, but, of course, we do not have the privilege to observe the foreground signal alone. The foreground must be estimated and the cosmological signal extracted from one observed total signal. Shaver et al. (1999) considered various possible strategies, including interpolations and extrapolations from frequencies outside the expected signal range, and a ”trend analysis” approach. In the present analysis we have tried fitting a low order polynomial to the total signal as a surrogate for measuring the smooth foreground signal, but we found the results to be marginal and strongly dependent on the frequency range used to make a polynomial fit (this range is also seriously constrained by the presence of FM bands below $`108\text{ MHz}`$ and TV bands above $`174\text{ MHz}`$). We have also tried to use a power spectrum analysis of the spectral index to pick up high frequency variations, and found this approach to be relatively insensitive to the presence of the cosmological signal. Thus, we conclude that the mean signal is not easily separable from the smooth foreground, although sophisticated statistical approaches might yield more success.

As mentioned above, all simulations are normalized to reproduce the observed mean transmitted flux in the spectra of SDSS quasars at $`z6`$. This observational constraint is a great advantage, as it leaves relatively small freedom in the possible variation of the excess brightness temperature. However, there is uncertainty about the beginning and duration of the pre-reionization era, which has been highlighted by the recent WMAP results.

The first results from the WMAP experiment indicated a high value ($`\tau 0.17`$) of the optical depth to Thompson scattering (Kogut et al. 2003). While these results have not been confirmed by a more comprehensive analysis of the combined WMAP and SDSS data (Tegmark et al. 2004), the possibility of a prolonged pre-reionization era remains an interesting one (Madau, Ferrara, & Rees 2001; Oh et al. 2001; Oh 2001; Venkatesan, Giroux, & Shull 2001). In order to investigate the possible effect a prolonged pre-reionization era might have on the observations of the $`21\text{ cm}`$ emission, we have constructed three reionization models that all produce an optical depth to Thompson scattering of $`\tau =0.2`$ \- about $`1\sigma `$ above the best-estimate value of Tegmark et al. (2004). These ionization histories are shown in Figure 4 together with out fiducial model from the simulation set A.

It is important to underline that these ionization histories are obtained arbitrarily, and are not results of simulations - in fact, the nature of ionizing sources that can produce such histories is not known. More than that, the light grey curve, which is designed to mimic “double reionization” (Cen 2003), is, in fact, unphysical, as low density regions in the universe will not be able to recombine between redshifts 12 and 7. Hence, these ionization histories only serve to illustrate the sensitivity of the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ H I measurement as a tool for discriminating various ionization histories. The respective predictions for the mean signal are shown in Figure 5. As one can see, the $`21\text{ cm}`$ measurement may be used to constrain ionization histories in which the universe remains partially ionized for a prolonged period of time, but is not sensitive to the models in which the universe was reionized twice. However, as we have mentioned above, such models are not very plausible.

## 4 Fluctuations in $`21\text{ cm}`$ Emission

The $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal is not, of course, completely uniform over the sky: there are several sources of fluctuations in the $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal at high redshift.

At the redshifts of interest ($`z10`$), a given comoving size $`\mathrm{\Delta }x`$ corresponds to the angular size

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\theta =0^{}.6C_z\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }x}{h^1\text{ Mpc}}$$

and the range of frequencies in the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ line

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\nu =0.1\text{ MHz}D_z\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }x}{h^1\text{ Mpc}},$$

where $`C_z`$ and $`D_z`$ are weak functions of $`z`$ in the redshift interval $`6<z<10`$. For $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{m,0}=0.35`$ at $`z=9`$, $`C_z=0.938`$ and $`D_z=0.894`$. Thus, any realistic observation with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu 1\text{ MHz}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta 1^{}`$ will probe the linear regime at $`z712`$ with $`\mathrm{\Delta }x2h^1\text{ Mpc}`$.

The linear large-scale density fluctuations are the subject of this paper. As mentioned above, another possible source of fluctuations in the high redshift $`21\text{ cm}`$ emission are H II regions created by bright quasars well before the moment of reionization (Madau et al. 1997; Tozzi et al. 2000). Such H II regions, if big enough, could be prominent features scattered sparsely over the sky. However, the simulations presented in this paper do not encompass sufficiently large computational volumes to include luminous quasars. Models that include a representative sample of bright quasars require a different computational approach, and will be the subject of a future paper.

Fluctuations can also be caused by variations in the quantity $`q=1T_{\mathrm{CMB}}/T_S`$, where $`T_S`$ is the gas spin temperature. However, the simulations that we use in this paper suggest that such variations are negligible compared to the density variations.

Given the power spectrum of density fluctuations $`P(k)`$ (hereafter we assume that the gas follows the dark matter on large scales), the rms density fluctuation as a function of the angular resolution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta `$ and the frequency bandwidth $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ is given by the following equation:

$$\delta _{\mathrm{RMS}}^2=\frac{1}{(2\pi )^3}\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}𝑑k_{}d^2k_{}P\left(k\right)e^{k_{}^2R_{}^2\stackrel{}{k}_{}^2R_{}^2},$$
(2)
where $`k_{}`$ is the wavenumber along the line-of-sight (the frequency dimension), $`\stackrel{}{k}_{}`$ is the wavevector in the plane of the sky (two angular dimensions), $`k\sqrt{k_{}^2+\stackrel{}{k_{}}^2}`$, and

$$R_{}=1h^1\text{ Mpc}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }{2.35\times 0.1\text{ MHz}D_z}$$

and

$$R_{}=1h^1\text{ Mpc}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\theta }{2.35\times 0^{}.6C_z},$$

and the factor $`2.35=2\sqrt{2\mathrm{log}2}`$ comes from the conversion from the FWHM to the gaussian dispersion.

As an example, Figure 6 shows linear fluctuations in a $`20^o\times 20^o`$ region of the sky. Because the fluctuations are gaussian, there are no distinct features in the image, and separating this signal from the random fluctuations in the foregrounds is a non-trivial task. A big enough quasar will create an H II region around itself, and will form a significant structure in the fluctuation map (Madau et al. 1997) - as mentioned above, this effect will be considered in a follow-up paper.

A complimentary view of the fluctuations in the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ emission is provided in Figure 7, which shows the excess brightness temperature and its rms fluctuations for our three simulation sets as a function of frequency. The level of rms fluctuations on the scale we consider is only about 10% of the mean signal.

In order to determine whether the fluctuations are potentially observable, they have to be compared with the possible fluctuations in the foreground (galactic and extragalactic) emission.

### 4.1 Angular Fluctuations

As has been discussed by Di Matteo et al. (2002), angular fluctuations due to extragalactic radio sources are significantly larger than those from the pre-reionization era. In order to estimate the contribution of the extragalactic sources, Di Matteo et al. (2002) adopted a model for differential source counts at $`150\text{ MHz}`$ at low flux density levels, $`N(S)700\text{ sr}^1\text{ mJy}^1(S/1\text{ mJy})^{1.75}`$, and a model for the source correlation function, $`w(\theta )(\theta /\theta _0)^{0.85}`$ with $`\theta _0=4^{}`$. While the indexes of the power-laws adopted by Di Matteo et al. (2002) agree with other studies, there exist surprising differences in the values of the amplitudes they adopted. For example, Hopkins et al. (1998) give the source number counts as $`N(S)10\text{ sr}^1\text{ mJy}^1(S/1\text{ mJy})^{1.75}`$ at $`1.4\text{ GHz}`$. Assuming that no new source population is present at $`150\text{ MHz}`$ that is not observed at $`1.4\text{ GHz}`$, and that the source spectral index between $`150\text{ MHz}`$ and $`1.4\text{ GHz}`$ is about -0.75, the source flux density of $`1\text{ mJy}`$ at $`1.4\text{ GHz}`$ translates into $`5.4\text{ mJy}`$ at $`150\text{ MHz}`$, which gives the source number counts at $`150\text{ MHz}`$ at $`S=1\text{ mJy}`$ of about $`200\text{ sr}^1\text{ mJy}^1`$, a factor of 3.5 below the value adopted by Di Matteo et al. (2002). In addition, both FIRST and NVSS measurements of the extragalactic radio source correlation function give the functional form adopted by Di Matteo et al. (2002) but with $`\theta _01^{}`$ (Blake & Wall, 2002). The latter applies for sources brighter than a few mJy at $`1.4\text{ GHz}`$ \- significantly brighter than sources considered by Di Matteo et al. (2002) - but it is difficult to imagine that faint sources are clustered more strongly than the bright ones. The total effect of these corrections would be to reduce the Di Matteo et al. (2002) estimate of the foreground fluctuations by a factor of 11.

On the other hand, Di Matteo et al. (2002), as one of their cases, showed their estimate when all sources above $`1\mu \text{ Jy}`$ have been removed from the data (thick black line in Fig. 1 of Di Matteo et al. 2002), which is, probably, an overly optimistic assumption. If we conservatively assume that only sources above $`1\text{ mJy}`$ can be effectively removed from the data or adequately modeled in the data analysis, then the estimate of angular fluctuations from the extragalactic radio sources would be a factor of 10 higher - but that is almost exactly compensated by the factor of 11 by which Di Matteo et al. (2002) overestimated the clustering signal of extragalactic point sources. Therefore, for the rest of this paper, we adopt the thick solid line from Fig. 1 of Di Matteo et al. (2002) as a reasonable estimate for the angular fluctuations in the $`21\text{ cm}`$ signal due to the clustering of extragalactic radio sources.

As can be seen from the top panel of Figure 8, our results fully agree with the conclusions of Di Matteo et al. (2002): the contamination by the extragalactic source population makes it highly unlikely that the predicted levels of the $`21\text{ cm}`$ fluctuation signal from the pre-reionization era can be reached.

Not only the extragalactic radio sources, but also the even stronger galactic foreground emission will produce substantial angular fluctuations in the emission over the sky. Such fluctuations may extend down to quite small angular scales, and can only add to the already dominant fluctuations from the extragalactic source population. The small contribution from galactic thermal emission will certainly add to the fluctuation signal - it may be similar to the structure in the galactic infrared cirrus. There may in addition be other contributors to the foreground angular fluctuation signal, such as the extended radio emission from clusters of galaxies. Thus, in view of the overwhelming foreground contamination, it seems highly unlikely that the angular fluctuations in the redshifted H I signal will by themselves be useful in studying the pre-reionization era.

Can one possibly use frequency information to help separate the angular fluctuations in the HI signal from the foreground fluctuations, as the spectra of the foregrounds are expected to be smooth, with only gradual changes in spectral index? In order to investigate this possibility, we computed the angular variation in the spectral index on the sky as the difference between two images taken $`5\text{ MHz}`$ apart. The bottom panel of Fig. 8 shows the rms spectral index fluctuations as a function of angular scale at $`150\text{ MHz}`$ ($`z=8.5`$). Unfortunately, spatial variations in the spectral index of the galactic synchrotron emission make this approach difficult if not impossible. Banday & Wolfendale (1991) estimate variations of the order of 0.1 on angular scales of $`3^o.5`$. While their estimate applies to the frequency range from $`400`$ to $`800\text{ MHz}`$, it is reasonable to assume that similar variations exist at frequencies around $`150\text{ MHz}`$. The dotted line in the bottom panel of Fig. 8 shows a simple toy model for the variation in the spectral index of the galactic synchrotron emission: we take Banday & Wolfendale’s (1991) value of 0.1 at $`3^o.5`$, and then assume that fluctuations are uncorrelated on larger scales and remain fixed on smaller scales. This lower limit is overly conservative, since Banday & Wolfendale (1991) indicate that fluctuations in the spectral index are correlated on angular scales above $`3^o`$, and on smaller angular scales fluctuations are expected to be higher because the angular scale of $`3^o`$ does not correspond to any particular physical scale.

There may be other more sophisticated techniques that can be employed in analyzing the observed data cube. However, on the basis of present knowledge, we conclude that the angular fluctuations will be extremely difficult if not impossible to utilize in measuring and studying the H I signal.

### 4.2 Fluctuations in the Frequency Domain

If the angular fluctuations are not observable, one may still hope to use the fact that all known radio foregrounds are expected to be relatively smooth functions of frequency, and rely on the frequency information alone to separate the cosmological signal. For the cosmological signal the frequency direction is just another spatial dimension, and so the cosmological signal should fluctuate in frequency space very much as it fluctuates over the sky. By contrast, the foreground contamination is totally different in the angular and frequency dimensions: the foreground angular signal has all the structure of a distribution of point sources over the sky, whereas the foreground frequency signal is just a sum of smooth spectra, hence itself a smooth function, against which the relatively sharp cosmological fluctuations (in frequency) should stand out clearly. This approach may in fact be by far the best one to studying the reionization H I signal. Other authors (e.g. Di Matteo et al. 2002) have also recognized this possibility; here we quantify it and show the dependence on observational parameters such as beam size and bandwidth.

Figure 9 shows the H I fluctuations superimposed on the combined spectrum of the galactic and extragalactic foregrounds (spectral index is used here in order to be able to show both the H I and foreground signals on a single plot). The difference between the frequency structure of the H I signal and the foregrounds is immediately obvious, and it is clear that one may study the former with not too much complication from the latter. Thus, it appears that the best strategy for measuring the reionization signal may be to forsake any attempt to measure angular fluctuations and concentrate on frequency fluctuations alone. Thanks to the relative spectral smoothness of the foreground emissions, this is almost certainly the best approach to detect and study the reionization H I signal. (Note that we assume here that the beamsize is independent of frequency; the effect of a frequency-dependent beam is considered below.)

The excess brightness temperature fluctuations (with the mean signal subtracted) are shown in Figure 10 for several values of the beam size and bandwidth. As can be seen from the figures, the frequency fluctuations are a strong function of the beam size (which we specify at $`150\text{ MHz}`$) and the bandwidth, but for a large range of beam sizes and bandwidths they are well above the sensitivity limits (for example, for a $`4^{}`$ beam and $`1\text{ MHz}`$ bandwidth the signal-to-noise ratio at $`150\text{ MHz}`$ is about 22 for a 40-day integration).

The fluctuations in the frequency domain depend on the bandwidth. Is there an optimal range for the value of the bandwidth? Obviously, fluctuations are smaller on the larger scales. However, the sensitivity is also higher for larger bandwidths. It turns out that these two effects almost cancel each other: Figure 11 shows that for bandwidths in excess of about $`1\text{ MHz}`$, the signal-to-noise ratio is essentially constant, so the exact value of the bandwidth is probably not that important.

In order to illustrate the measurability of the fluctuation signal in the frequency domain, we present in Figure 12 contours of fixed signal-to-noise ratio for various beam sizes, bandwidths, and integration times, as a guide for developing an observational strategy. Since our fiducial model is based only on known physical processes and does not include an extended period of reionization, it can serve as an upper limit for the expected signal (except for the occasional presence of a luminous QSO in the beam). Thus, the signal-to-noise ratio of a real experiment may be smaller, but generally will not be larger, than the one shown in Fig. 12.

The top panel of Fig. 12 also shows what angular and frequency scales one needs in order to measure the mean signal: S/N=3 for the fluctuations essentially means that fluctuations are unobservable, so different patches of the sky larger than about 2 degrees will have the same signal within the sensitivity limit (for a 40-day integration).

The feasibility of measuring the frequency signal will, of course, critically depend on the ability to calibrate different frequency bands to within a fraction of a  mK. Such an observation may be done, for example, by beam switching between the target area on the sky and a strong nearby extragalactic radio source, whose spectrum is expected to be very smooth on $`1\text{ MHz}`$ frequency scales. This approach would be difficult or impossible for the detection of the mean (all-sky) signal, as discussed by Shaver et al. (1999), because the frequency dependence of the mean H I signal is relatively smooth, but in the case of the sharp frequency variations of the fluctuation signal it should become possible. This could be a great advantage because relative measurements are far easier to make than absolute measurements.

There will be some natural narrow-band contaminants of the frequency signal, such as galactic radio recombination lines. However these show up at well-known frequencies (separated by typically $`12\text{ MHz}`$ in this frequency range), and they are narrow, so they can be removed from the data. A major potential contaminant, of course, is man-made RFI. However, it is variable and generally very narrow-band; techniques are being developed to identify and excise such contamination. How completely such contamination can be removed remains to be determined, however. To the extent that spectral contaminants show up predominantly in emission, whereas the fluctuations in Fig. 10 go both ways, in emission and in absorption relative to the smooth foreground, it may be possible to use these properties to help identify and characterize the signal. Furthermore, as the cosmological parameters to be extracted from the gaussian H I signal are the same in all directions of the sky, observations in different directions should ultimately give the same results.

In addition to the contaminants mentioned above, there is another effect that can potentially obscure the cosmological H I signal: the leakage of the angular fluctuations into the frequency domain due to the frequency-dependent beam size (Oh & Mack 2004; Di Matteo et al. 2002). In the simplest case of a single filled aperture, it is inversely proportional to the frequency of observations. In order to see fluctuations in the cosmological H I signal, one has to observe over a range of frequencies, and because observations at different frequencies have different beam sizes, they sample different regions of the sky. The angular fluctuations between the observed brightness temperature in these different regions appear as fluctuations in the frequency domain.

It is straightforward to estimate this effect. Using equation (4) of Di Matteo et al. (2002), we approximate the power spectrum of fluctuations in a beam with a gaussian width $`\sigma `$ as

$$C_l=A^2l^{\beta 2}e^{l^2\sigma ^2/2},$$
(3)
where $`C_l`$ is the total power in a spherical multipole $`l`$, $`A`$ is the amplitude of fluctuations at $`l=1`$, and $`\beta 0.85`$ is the power-law index of the fluctuation angular correlation function.

Let $`T(\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Omega }},\sigma )`$ be a temperature fluctuation in a beam with a gaussian width $`\sigma `$ in the direction $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ on the sky. Two observations in the direction $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ spaced in frequency by $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ would see the rms difference in the brightness temperature:

$$\delta T_{\mathrm{RMS}}\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma \left(\frac{dT(\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Omega }},\sigma )}{d\sigma }\right)^2^{1/2}=$$

$$\sqrt{\beta (\beta +1)}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma }{\sigma }T_{\mathrm{RMS}},$$
(4)
where $`T_{\mathrm{RMS}}`$ is the rms angular temperature fluctuation in the beam $`\sigma `$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma /\sigma =\mathrm{\Delta }\nu /\nu `$. For a beam with FWHM of $`4^{}`$ this estimate gives a value of about $`6\text{ mK}`$ at $`150\text{ MHz}`$ for $`T_{\mathrm{RMS}}=1\text{ K}`$. This fact was noted by Di Matteo et al. (2002) and Oh & Mack (2004) as a severe obstacle for measuring cosmological fluctuations in the frequency domain. However, these previous works missed the fact that the leaked angular fluctuations are strongly correlated. Let us consider three beams A, B, and C spaced by $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ in frequency, with beam sizes $`\theta _A`$, $`\theta _B`$, and $`\theta _C`$. The signal in beam A will differ from the signal in beam B by some amount due to sources located within the ring on the sky with a radius of $`(\theta _A+\theta _B)/2`$ and the width of $`\theta _B\theta _A`$. Analogously, the signal in beam B will differ from the signal in beam C due to sources located within a ring from $`\theta _B`$ to $`\theta _C`$. But because these two rings are adjacent to each other, sources within the ring $`\theta _B\theta _A`$ are strongly correlated with the sources within the ring $`\theta _C\theta _A`$, so that the increase or decrease in the total signal in beams B and C due to fluctuations will be a relatively smooth function of frequency as well, and the frequency fluctuations from the leakage signal will be much smaller. Namely, given a temperature difference $`T_{BA}`$ between beams B and A and the temperature difference $`T_{CB}`$ between beams C and B, the rms difference between these two temperatures $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{RMS}}\left(T_{CB}T_{BA}\right)^2^{1/2}`$ is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{RMS}}=\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma \left(\frac{d\delta T(\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Omega }},\sigma )}{d\sigma }\right)^2^{1/2}=$$

$$\sqrt{2\beta (\beta ^2+4\beta +7)}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma }{\sigma }\right)^2T_{\mathrm{RMS}},$$
(5)
another factor of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu /\nu 1/150`$ smaller.

In order to illustrate this fact further, we have simulated the leakage effect by constructing a sample of the sky with gaussian fluctuations222The assumption of gaussianity is a good one as long as the number of point sources within the beam is large, which is the case for the values of the beam size considered here. having a power-law power spectrum, as given by equation (4) of Di Matteo et al. (2002). We then computed the temperature within the gaussian beam of variable size $`\theta =4^{}(\nu /150\text{ MHz})`$ for $`\nu `$ ranging from 80 to $`250\text{ MHz}`$ in increments of $`1\text{ MHz}`$ (the bandwidth used in the middle panel of Fig. 10), centered at a random point on the simulated region of the sky. One realization of the leakage signal within the beam is shown in Figure 13. The black solid line gives the leaking angular fluctuation $`\delta T`$, and the two black dashed lines show the $`\pm 5\sigma `$ levels of contamination of the cosmological H I signal expected in this case ($`5\times \mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{RMS}}`$). As one can see, the contamination is comparable to the observational noise for a 40-day integration, so it becomes the dominant component of noise for longer integration times. Thus, it will not be useful to use integration times well in excess of 40 days on a given field.

Figure 14 illustrates possible observational choices when the angular fluctuation leakage is included as a source of noise. The top panel of Fig. 14 shows contours of signal-to-noise ratio with only leakage noise included - these contours scale in inverse proportion to the amplitude of angular fluctuation on the beam scale. The bottom panel includes both the observational noise and the leakage noise. While the bottom panel is the most complete representation of possible observational signal-to-noise ratio for our model, the contours on the bottom panel depend on both the integration time and the amplitude of angular fluctuations on the beam scale and scale non-trivially when these quantities are changed. Therefore, while this panel can be used as an illustration of possibilities, it is only applicable for the values of observational or theoretical parameters adopted in this paper.

Other sources of angular fluctuations that might produce leakage in the frequency domain are the galactic synchrotron and thermal emission. If the galactic emission is not structured more strongly on scales of tens of arcminutes than the extragalactic point source contamination, then it will not present a significant obstacle to measuring the cosmological H I signal, but this question requires further investigation, including more detailed observations of the galactic emission.

There are various ways in which the leakage of angular fluctuations could be minimized. The most important would obviously be to observe with the same beam size at all frequencies. This could best be approximated with the use of scaled arrays especially designed to control the synthesized beam and sidelobes. For filled-aperture telescopes, frequency-dependent illumination of the reflector would be required, at least over a limited frequency range, but this would then utilize only a fraction of the total aperture, and would undoubtedly be a major technical challenge. In any case it would clearly be advantageous to observe in directions of the sky where the foreground contamination is lowest: regions of low extragalactic source density and fluctuations, and regions of high galactic latitude where the galactic emission is weakest and smoothest.

## 5 Conclusions

The challenge in observing the redshifted $`21\text{ cm}`$ line of neutral hydrogen from the pre-reionization era is not that it is weak, but rather that it is hidden behind strong foreground emission (both galactic and extragalactic). Our results confirm the conclusions of other authors that detection of the angular fluctuations on the sky will be extremely difficult or impossible because of the huge contamination from fluctuations in the foreground emissions.

Better opportunities are provided by the fact that the radio foregrounds are slowly varying as a function of frequency. This generic feature might make it feasible (although very challenging) to detect the overall mean signal from the pre-reionization era. This signal would be the true average over the whole sky, which in practice means a signal on scales larger than about two degrees - the signal on these scales is expected to be the same in all directions on the sky.

However, by far the best opportunity to measure the cosmological signal (again thanks to the spectral smoothness of the foregrounds) is offered by its frequency structure. The large-scale density fluctuations in a single beam are uncorrelated on frequency scales above about $`0.20.3\text{ MHz}`$, so that the excess brightness temperature varies by about $`23\text{ mK}`$ and the local spectral index of the radio signal varies by about 0.4% on scales of the order of $`1\text{ MHz}`$. These sharp variations should not be difficult to separate from the smoothly varying foreground signal.

Thus, the frequency fluctuation signal stands out in comparison with the other two possibilities (mean signal and angular fluctuations). While the observability of the latter two depends critically on confusion with foregrounds, the former may be largely just a matter of sensitivity. Frequency calibration, contamination by spectral lines or leakage of angular fluctuations, and RFI may all be manageable problems. Using our simulations we have shown that it may then be possible to detect the H I signal from the pre-reionization era even at moderate angular resolution ($`1020`$ arcmin), corresponding to filled apertures of a few hundred meters diameter.

This work was supported in part by NSF grant AST-0134373 and by National Computational Science Alliance under grant AST-020018N and utilized SGI Origin 2000 array and IBM P690 array at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.


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# Influence of Fe and Co on Phase Transitions in Ni-Mn-Ga Alloys

## I Introduction

In resent years ferromagnetic shape memory alloys have attracted considerable attention as a new class of actuator materials (see, for a recent review, Ref. 1). Among ferromagnetic shape memory alloys, the largest magnetic-field-induced strains arising from conversion of martensitic variants under action of a magnetic field 2-m ; 3-u  or caused by the shift of the martensitic transition temperature 4-c ; 5-t  have been observed in the most intensively studied Ni2MnGa alloy system.

Ni2MnGa is a representative of Mn-containing Heusler alloys. For the stoichiometric composition a structural phase transition of martensitic type from the parent cubic to a complex tetragonally based structure occurs at $`T_m=202`$ K, whereas long-range ferromagnetic ordering sets at $`T_C=376`$ K 6-w . The martensitic transition temperature $`T_m`$ was found to be very sensitive to the composition, ranging from liquid helium temperature up to over 600 K 7-c ; 8-j . Contrary to $`T_m`$, Curie temperature $`T_C`$ of Ni-Mn-Ga alloys is less composition dependent. Based on the published experimental results 9-w  it can be concluded that the highest $`T_C380`$ K is observed in the stoichiometric Ni2MnGa. A decrease of $`T_C`$ in the alloys with deficiency in Mn, which possesses a magnetic moment of $`4\mu _B`$, is due to the dilution of the magnetic subsystem. For the alloys with Mn excess, it was suggested that the decrease in $`T_C`$ is accounted for by antiferromagnetic coupling of the extra Mn atoms 10-e .

Analyzing data collected for a broad compositional range of Ni-Mn-Ga alloys, Chernenko 11-c  pointed out that there exists a correlation between the electron concentration and stability of high-temperature $`\beta `$-phase in the Ni-Mn-Ga system. Now it is generally acknowledged that a change of electron concentration $`e/a`$ significantly affects martensitic transition temperature $`T_m`$ of Ni-Mn-Ga alloys, and, therefore, an empirical relationship between $`T_m`$ and $`e/a`$ can be reasonably used for the preparation of alloys with required martensitic transition temperature 12-j . Since large magnetic-field-induced strains are observed only in the ferromagnetic state, an efficient control of the ferromagnetic ordering temperature is of importance for realization of this effect in a large temperature interval and development of high temperature ferromagnetic shape memory alloys. Since previous experimental studies 9-w ; 11-c  have shown that any deviation from the stoichiometry results in decrease of $`T_C`$ in Ni-Mn-Ga alloys, we studied the influence of 3-$`d`$ ferromagnetic transition elements Fe and Co on Curie temperature $`T_C`$ and martensitic transition temperature $`T_m`$ of Ni-Mn-Ga.

## II Sample preparation and measurements

Co- and Fe-containing Ni-Mn-Ga ingots of various compositions were prepared by arc-melting of high-purity initial elements in argon atmosphere. The ingots were annealed at 1100 K for 9 days in quartz ampoules and quenched in ice water. Samples for the measurements were cut from the middle part of the ingots. The real compositions of the alloys were determined by an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICPMS) method. Determination of the chemical compositions by ICPMS revealed that the real compositions of the alloys are close to the nominal ones. Characteristic temperatures of the direct (martensite start, $`M_s`$ and martensite finish, $`M_f`$) and the reverse (austenite start, $`A_s`$ and austenite finish, $`A_f`$) martensitic transformations were determined from differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements. The martensitic transition temperature $`T_m`$ was calculated as $`T_m=(M_s+A_s)/2`$. A vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) was used for low-field magnetic measurements. Curie temperature $`T_C`$ was determined as a minimum on the temperature derivative of magnetization curve measured upon heating, $`dM/dT`$. Nominal compositions of the alloys studied together with their martensitic and ferromagnetic transition temperatures are given in Table 1.

## III Experimental results

### III.1 Co-containing alloys

The nominal compositions of the alloys studied are Ni2.16-xCoxMn0.84Ga ($`x`$ = 0.03, 0.06 and 0.09) and Ni2.16Mn0.84-yCoyGa ($`y`$ = 0.04, 0.09 and 0.14). It was found that the compositional dependencies of $`T_m`$ strongly depend on the Co position. Thus, the martensitic transition temperature $`T_m`$ of the Ni2.16-xCoxMn0.84Ga alloys slightly decreases with the Co excess, whereas in the Ni2.16Mn0.84-yCoyGa alloys the increase in Co content results in a significant increase of $`T_m`$ (Table 1). A marked increase in the temperature of martensitic transition in the alloys where Co is substituted for Mn makes these materials attractive for use as high-temperature shape memory alloys.

The behavior of Curie temperature $`T_C`$ in these two series of alloys also depends significantly on the position of Co. In the Ni2.16-xCoxMn0.84Ga alloys Curie temperature increases from 348 K to 367 K with increasing Co content from $`x=0.03`$ to $`x=0.06`$ (Table 1). Contrary to this, $`T_C`$ in the Ni2.16Mn0.84-yCoyGa alloys exhibits a non-monotonic dependence, and initially increases from $`T_C=352`$ K ($`y=0.04`$) to $`T_C=372`$ K ($`y=0.09`$) and then decreases to $`T_C=350`$ K for $`y=0.14`$ (Fig. 1). Moreover, $`T_C`$ in the Ni2.16Mn0.80Co0.04Ga alloy exhibits hysteretic feature, as evidenced from $`M(T)`$ measured upon heating and cooling (Fig. 2). Such an unusual behavior of ferromagnetic transition temperature is caused by the coupling of martensitic and ferromagnetic transition temperatures and has been observed in Ni2.18Mn0.82Ga and Ni2.19Mn0.81Ga alloys 13-k ; 14-f .

### III.2 Fe-containing alloys

In the Fe-containing series of Ni-Mn-Ga alloys Fe was added instead of Ni to the host Ni2.20Mn0.80Ga composition. The nominal compositions of Ni2.20-zFezMn0.80Ga alloys are characterized by the Fe content $`z`$ = 0.04, 0.08, 0.12 and 0.16. DSC measurements revealed that the martensitic transition temperature continuously decreases from $`T_m=317`$ K to $`T_m=223`$ K as Fe content increases from $`z=0.04`$ to $`z=0.16`$ (Table 1).

The low-field magnetization measurements showed that Curie temperature $`T_C`$ of the Ni2.20-zFezMn0.80Ga alloys increases with the increase in Fe content (Table 1). In the sample with the highest Fe content, Ni2.04Fe0.16Mn0.80Ga, $`T_C=395`$ K is higher than that of the stoichiometric Ni2MnGa.

## IV Discussion

It was suggested that the electron concentration plays an important role not only in stabilizing the Heusler structure but that it is also a driving force for the structural phase transition in Ni2MnGa, which takes place when the contact between the Fermi surface and Brillouin zone boundary occurs 6-w . The change in a number of valence electrons results in alteration of the density of states curve, which is a basis for the correlation the extent of phase stability and electron concentration $`e/a`$ 15-s .

Our study of Co- and Fe-containing Ni-Mn-Ga alloys revealed that increasing/decreasing in the number of conduction electron results in increase/decrease of the martensitic transformation temperature. Data presented in Fig. 3 clearly demonstrate this tendency. Resulting in decrease of the electron concentration $`e/a`$, substitution of Co for Ni as well as Fe for Ni leads to the decrease of martensitic transition temperature. In the case of substitution of Co for Mn, the increase in the electron concentration brings to the increase of $`T_m`$ from 345 K for Ni2.16Mn0.80Co0.04Ga to 518 K for Ni2.16Mn0.70Co0.14Ga. This result is in agreement with an earlier experimental study of Co-containing Ni-Mn-Ga alloys 16-n .

Therefore, these results indicate that the approach used for the description of martensitic transition temperature as a function of electron concentration in ternary Ni-Mn-Ga can also be applied for the case of quaternary Heusler alloys. Obviously, such an approach can be used only in a limited range of concentration of the forth element, where phase separation does not take place. It is worth noting, however, that new ferromagnetic shape memory alloys were found recently in Ni-Co-Ga 17-o  and Ni-Fe-Ga 18-o ; 19-o ; 20-l ; 21-l  systems, which formally can be considered as the case of complete substitution of Mn for Co and Fe, respectively.

Magnetization measurements of two series of samples where Ni was substituted by Co or Fe showed that Curie temperature increases with increasing Co (or Fe) content (Table 1). The most pronounced increase of $`T_C`$ is observed in the Fe-containing alloys, where Curie temperature increases from 347 K ($`z=0.04`$) to 395 K ($`z=0.16`$). Note that a considerable increase in $`T_C`$ was also observed in alloys where Fe was added instead of Mn, Ni2Mn1-xFexGa 22-l ; 23-w . The highest Curie temperature, $`T_C=433`$ K, reported in those studies, was observed in the Ni2.016Mn0.40Fe0.72Ga0.864 composition.

The Mn content remains constant in the Fe- and Co-containing alloys (Mn content $`y=0.84`$ for the Co-containing samples and Mn content $`z=0.80`$ for the Fe-containing samples) and, therefore, the Mn magnetic subsystem is supposed to be not influenced by these substitutions. The observed increase of $`T_C`$ in the Co- and Fe-containing samples implies that the magnetic properties of Ni-Mn-Ga should be considered taking into account small magnetic moments located on Ni atoms 24-w  and their coupling with magnetic moments of Mn atoms. For example, the increase in $`T_C`$ in these alloys can be accounted for by a stronger Co-Mn (Fe-Mn) exchange interaction as compared to the Ni-Mn one. Our experimental data, however, are not sufficient to make an unambiguous conclusion about the mechanism responsible for the increase of $`T_C`$ and therefore this effect needs further investigation. The experimentally observed increase of $`T_C`$ in Ni2.16-xCoxMn0.84Ga and Ni2.20-zFezMn0.80Ga is in accordance with a recent theoretical consideration of magnetic properties of Ni2MnGa and Ni2MnAl 25-e . In Ref.  a suggestion was made that Ni significantly affects $`T_C`$ in these alloys and, therefore, Curie temperature in Ni2MnGa could be increased by a substitution of the Ni sites. Note also that this suggestion is in accordance with empirical observation that Curie temperature of Co2MnZ or Cu2MnZ (Z is a non-transition element) alloys is higher than $`T_C`$ in corresponding Ni2MnZ alloys 24-w .

In the Ni2.16Mn0.84-yCoyGa alloys Curie temperature $`T_C`$ exhibits a non-monotonous dependence as the Co content increases (Fig. 1). This is rather unusual, because in the Mn-containing Heusler alloys the dilution of the Mn magnetic subsystem generally results in decrease of $`T_C`$. In Ni2+xMn1-xGa alloys, however, merging of $`T_m`$ and $`T_C`$ is accompanied by the increase of $`T_C`$ in a limited composition interval $`x=0.180.20`$ 26-v . By analogy with the Ni2+xMn1-xGa alloys it could be suggested that the increase of $`T_C`$ from 352 K to 372 K as the Co content changes from $`y=0.04`$ to $`y=0.09`$ is accounted for by the coupling of martensitic and ferromagnetic transitions, occurring in the Ni2.16Mn0.75Co0.09Ga alloy. This is not the case, as evident from the DSC measurements, which revealed that for this composition $`T_m=437`$ K is considerably higher than $`T_C`$. Therefore, it is necessary to look for another mechanism responsible for the non-monotonous compositional dependence of $`T_C`$ in the Ni2.16Mn0.84-yCoyGa alloys. It is worth noting that similar behavior of $`T_C`$ has been observed in a Fe2Mn1-xVxSi system, where Curie temperature was found to increase from 219 K to 315 K with increasing $`x`$ from $`x=0`$ to $`x=0.5`$, followed by a rapid decrease at a higher V content 27-k . It was suggested that this unusual behavior of the ferromagnetic ordering temperature in Fe2Mn1-xVxGa could be related to the band structure of the system 28-f . In future it would be interesting to perform similar band calculation for the Ni2.16Mn0.84-yCoyGa system. Further experimental studies of Ni2.16Mn0.84-yCoyGa alloys are also necessary in order to determine the critical Co content at which Curie temperature has a maximal value.

## V Conclusion

In conclusion, our experimental results have revealed that in the studied Fe- and Co-containing Ni-Mn-Ga alloys the behavior of the martensitic transition temperature can be satisfactory described as a function of the electron concentration $`e/a`$. The magnetic measurements have shown that addition of Fe or Co instead of Ni results in increase of Curie temperature $`T_C`$. This observation together with the theoretical suggestion 25-e  gives a basic ground for the development of high temperature ferromagnetic shape memory alloys in the Ni-Mn-Ga system.