XMM Survey of the SHARC sample: constraining Omega and cluster formation

In the standard cosmological scenario of hierachical structure formation, boundobjects are formed from the collapse of intial density fluctuations that grow under the influence of gravity. Clusters of galaxies are still forming today,at a rate that depends on the mean density of the Universe. We propose an XMM survey of the SHARC sample, a new catalogue of Xray selected distant galaxy clusters (z > 0.2), detected in the ROSAT PSPC pointingarchive. We will study the statistical properties of the evolving cluster population e.g., the mass distribution function N(M,z) and correlations between physical quantities at various redshifts. This will provide unique truncated!, Please see actual data for full text [truncated!, Please see actual data for full text]