Effects of Submillimeter and Radio Point Sources on the Recovery of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Galaxy Cluster Parameters

Observations of clusters in the 30-350 GHz range can in principle be used to determine a galaxy cluster's Comptonization parameter y, peculiar velocity v, and gas temperature Te via the dependence of the kinetic and thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects on these parameters. Despite the significant contamination expected from thermal emission by dust in high-redshift galaxies, we find that the simultaneous determination of τ, v, and Te is possible from observations with sensitivity of a few μK in three or more bands with arcminute resolution. After allowing for realistic levels of contamination by dusty galaxies and primary CMB anisotropy, we find that simultaneous determinations of velocities to an accuracy of better than 200 km s-1 and temperatures to roughly keV accuracy should be possible in the near future. We study how errors change as a function of cluster properties (angular core radius and gas temperature) and experimental parameters (observing time, angular resolution, and observing frequencies). Contaminating synchrotron emission from cluster galaxies will probably not be a major contaminant of peculiar velocity measurements.