Studies of Structure Formation and Cosmology with Galaxy Cluster Surveys

Surveys of galaxy clusters provide a promising method of testing models of structure formation in the universe. Within the context of our standard structure formation scenario, surveys provide measurements of the geometry of the universe and the nature of the dark energy and dark matter. Cluster catalogues will be constructed using some combination of X-ray, optical/near--IR, and mm or cm-wave observations. These catalogues will be used to study the cluster redshift and mass distributions along with the correlations of the cluster spatial distribution. These measurements probe the volume--redshift relation, the power spectrum of density fluctuations and the evolution of galaxy cluster abundance. All are sensitive to the amount of dark matter Omega_M, the amount of dark energy Omega_E, the equation of state of the dark energy w(z) and any other parameter, which affects the expansion history of the universe.