Witnessing galaxy clusters: from maturity to childhood

Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in Universe. They are very important as both cosmological probes and astrophysical laboratories. Several methods have been developed to detect galaxy clusters with different techniques (optical, X-rays, Weak Lensing and Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect) providing cluster samples with a well-characterized purity and completeness rates up to moderate redshift (z$<$1.2). These samples allow us to study the systematic of different methods and to obtain reliable mass estimations. On the contrary, high redshift clusters only started to be explored very recently with the advent of deep IR and X-ray data surveys, providing the first proto-clusters (z$>$1.5-2) ever detected. In this talk, I introduce these techniques and review some of the cluster samples obtained including particular striking cases. I discuss their relevance in terms of cosmological and galaxy evolution constraints and finally, I briefly refer to the cluster science predictions for the next generation surveys.
Comment: Invited talk presented at the tenth scientific meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society, held in Valencia, Spain, in July 2012. To appear in the proceedings of the SEA X