Sunyaev - Zel'dovich Effect Imaging of Massive Clusters of Galaxies at Redshift > 0.8

We present Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect (SZE) imaging observations of three distant (z greater than 0.8) and highly X-ray luminous clusters of galaxies, C1J1226+33, C1J0152-13 and MS1054-03. Two of the clusters, C1J1226+33 and C1J0152-13, were recently discovered in the WARPS X-ray survey. Their high X-ray luminosity suggests they are massive systems and, if confirmed, would provide strong constraints on the cosmological parameters of structure formation models. Our Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect data provide confirmation that they are massive clusters similar to the well studied cluster MS1054-03. Assuming the clusters have the same gas mass fraction derived from SZE measurements of eighteen known massive clusters, we are able to infer their mass and electron temperatures from the SZE data. The derived electron temperatures are 10.0, 8.5, and 10.3 KeV, respectively, and we infer total masses of approximately 2 x 10(circumflex) 14 h(circumflex) -l M - sun within a radius of 65" for all three clusters. For C1J0152-13 and MS1054-03 we find good agreement between our SZE derived temperatures and those derived from X-ray spectroscopic measurements. No X-ray derived temperatures are available for C1J1226+33, 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.