X-Ray Temperatures for the Extended Medium-Sensitivity Survey High-Redshift Cluster Sample: Constraints on Cosmology and the Dark Energy Equation of State

We measure the X-ray temperature (and luminosity) with ASCA of all but one cluster in the Einstein Extended Medium-Sensitivity Survey (EMSS) high- redshift (z => 0.3) sample. We compare these data to a complete sample of low-redshift clusters that also has temperature measurements, thereby providing cosmological constraints. Improvements over our previous work include (1) an enlarged high-redshift sample; (2) temperatures for the low-redshift comparison sample that come from the same instrument as the high-redshift sample; (3) the elimination of three EMSS clusters with the same redshift as the target (i.e. not truly serendipitous) and a fourth with an ASCA flux well below the completeness limit; (4) using a theoretical cluster mass function that more closely matches N-body simulations (the Sheth-Torman function); (5) using a cold dark matter power spectrum instead of a power law; (6) using a general cosmology with arbitrary matter density and cosmological constant; (7) using a cosmology that generalizes the cosmological constant to quintessence; (8) including the effects of temperature measurement errors and scatter in the cluster luminosity-temperature relation; and (9) marginalizing over the poorly known normalization of the mass-temperature relation. We find an allowed band in the [Omega] sub(m0)-[Omega] sub(l0) plane of different orientation to the band of constraints provided by the supernovae Ia Hubble diagram and the cosmic microwave background fluctuations. All three bands intersect at the same place: [Omega] sub(m0) ~ 0.3, [Omega] sub(l0) ~ 0.7. We measure the quintessence equation-of-state parameter to be w =-(0.42 plus or minus 0.21) (68% confidence for one interesting parameter), consistent with previously determined upper limits. We measure the normalization of the mass fluctuation power spectrum to be capital sigma sub(8) = 0.66 plus or minus 0.16 (68% confidence for three interesting parameters). Systematic errors are larger than the statistical errors only for capital sigma sub(8) with our sample; thus the errors for it depend on the details of the marginalization over the temperature-mass normalization.