Surveys of Galaxy Clusters with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect

We have created mock Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) surveys of galaxy clusters using high-resolution N-body simulations. To the pure surveys, we add ``noise'' contributions appropriate to instrument and primary cosmic microwave background anisotropies. Applying various cluster finding strategies to these mock surveys, we generate catalogs that can be compared to the known positions and masses of the clusters in the simulations. We thus show that the completeness and efficiency that can be achieved depend strongly on the frequency coverage, noise, and beam characteristics of the instruments, as well as on the candidate threshold. We study the effects of matched filtering techniques on completeness and bias. We suggest a gentler filtering method than matched filtering in single-frequency analyses. We summarize the complications that arise when analyzing the SZE signal at a single frequency and assess the limitations of such an analysis. Our results suggest that some sophistication is required when searching for ``clusters'' within an SZE map.