An infrared study of distant galaxy clusters

We present a study of the infrared properties of distant galaxy clusters and their constituent galaxies covering the wavelength range 2.2mum --24mum. In the first part of the thesis we use ground-based K-band (2.2mum) data to study the scaling relations and luminosity functions (LFs) of 15 moderate redshift (0.2 < z < 0.5), X-ray luminous galaxy clusters. We find that the IR-selected density profiles, IR LFs, and the IR richness/light vs. mass scaling relations for these clusters are nearly identical to their local (z < 0.1) counterparts. The only notable change in the cluster NIR properties with redshift is the shallowing of the faint-end slope of the early-type LF with increasing redshift, which is attributed to "downsizing" in the cluster population.;In the final part of the thesis we present the results of a spectroscopic survey of cluster galaxies detected at 24mum. We use the optical spectroscopy to classify the galaxies and find that the majority of cluster MIR galaxies are star forming galaxies (∼ 80%), although their specific classes make them a very heterogeneous subset of galaxies. By comparing the equivalent widths of nebular emission lines we show that there is a non-negligible population of dusty star forming galaxies in clusters which have optical-IR colors redder than the cluster red-sequence.;In the second part of the thesis we combine the R-band and [3.6 mum] photometry from the 3.8 deg2 Spitzer First Look Survey and use the cluster red-sequence method to discover a set of 99 clusters at 0.1 < z < 1.3. Using this cluster sample we make the first measurement of the suite of IRAC cluster LFs ([3.6 mum], [4.5mum], [5.8mum], [8.0mum]) from 0.1 < z < 1.0. Similar to the K-band study we find that for the bands that trace stellar mass at these redshifts ([3.6mum], [4.5mum]) the evolution in M* is consistent with a passively evolving population of galaxies with a high formation redshift (zf > 1.5). The MIR ([5.8mum] & [8.0mum]) cluster LFs show that at z < 0.4 the bright-end of the cluster LF is well-described by a composite population of quiescent galaxies and regular star forming galaxies with a mix consistent with typical cluster blue fractions; however, at z > 0.4, an additional population of dusty starburst galaxies is required to properly model these LFs.