THREE CANDIDATE CLUSTERS OF GALAXIES AT REDSHIFT ∼1.8: THE MISSING LINK BETWEEN PROTOCLUSTERS AND LOCAL CLUSTERS?

We present three candidate clusters of galaxies at redshifts most likely between 1.7 and 2.0, which corresponds to a fundamentally unexplored epoch of cluster evolution. The candidates were found by studying the environment around our newly selected sample of beacons low-luminosity (FR I) radio galaxies in the COSMOS field. In this way, we intend to use the fact that FR Is at low z are almost invariably located in clusters of galaxies. We use the most accurate photometric redshifts available to date, derived by the COSMOS collaboration using photometry with a set of 30 filters, to look for three-dimensional space overdensities around our objects. Three out of the five FR Is in our sample which possess reliable photometric redshifts between z(phot) = 1.7 and 2.0 display overdensities that together are statistically significant at the 4 sigma level, compared to field counts, arguing for the presence of rich clusters of galaxies in their Mpc environment. These first results show that the new method for finding high-z clusters we recently proposed, which makes use of low-power FR I radio galaxies instead of the more powerful FR II sources often used in the literature to date, is returning very promising candidates.