Panchromatic Studies of Distant Clusters of Galaxies

Abstract

High redshift (z >~ 1) clusters are ideal probes to study the formation and evolution of large scale structures and galaxies in the universe. A 10-m class ground based telescope, X-ray observatories (Chandra, XMM-Newton) and HST/ACS are allowing us to perform an unprecedented study of distant massive clusters of galaxies in the redshift range 0.84<z<1.3, selected from X-rays surveys. In this paper we summarize our results on the structure and dynamics of two of these clusters derived from imaging and spectroscopic data as well as our results on the evolution of early-type galaxies.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in Modern Physics Letters A (invited brief review). v2: Order of authors in the .tex version corrected to match that in journa