Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect imaging of massive clusters of galaxies at redshift z > 0.8

We present Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) imaging observations of three distant (z > 0.8) and highly X-ray luminous clusters of galaxies, Cl J1226.9+3332, Cl J0152.7-1357, and MS 1054.4-0321. Two of the clusters, Cl J1226.9+3332 and Cl J0152.7-1357, were recently discovered in deep ROSAT X-ray images. Their high X-ray luminosity suggests that they are massive systems, which, if confirmed, would provide strong constraints on the cosmological parameters of structure formation models. Our SZE data provide confirmation that they are massive clusters similar to the well-studied cluster MS 1054.4-0321. Assuming the clusters have the same gas mass fraction as that derived from SZE measurements of 18 known massive clusters, we are able to infer their mass and electron temperature from the SZE data. The derived electron temperatures are 9.8(-1.9)(+4.7), 8.7(-1.8)(+4.1), and 10.4(-2.0)(+5.0) keV, respectively, and we infer total masses of similar to2 x 10(14) h(100)(-1) M. within a radius of 65 (340 h(100)(-1) kpc) for all three clusters. For Cl J0152.7-1357 and MS 1054.4-0321, we find good agreement between our SZE-derived temperatures and those inferred from X-ray spectroscopy. No X-ray-derived temperatures are available for Cl J1226.9+3332, and thus the SZE data provide the first confirmation that it is indeed a massive system. The demonstrated ability to determine cluster temperatures and masses from SZE observations without access to X-ray data illustrates the power of using deep SZE surveys to probe the distant universe.