  The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is conducting a Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect
survey over large areas of the southern sky, searching for massive galaxy
clusters to high redshift. In this preliminary study, we focus on a 40
square-degree area targeted by the Blanco Cosmology Survey (BCS), which is
centered roughly at right ascension 5h30m, declination -53 degrees. Over two
seasons of observations, this entire region has been mapped by the SPT at 95
GHz, 150 GHz, and 225 GHz. We report the four most significant SPT detections
of SZ clusters in this field, three of which were previously unknown and,
therefore, represent the first galaxy clusters discovered with an SZ survey.
The SZ clusters are detected as decrements with greater than 5-sigma
significance in the high-sensitivity 150 GHz SPT map. The SZ spectrum of these
sources is confirmed by detections of decrements at the corresponding locations
in the 95 GHz SPT map and non-detections at those locations in the 225 GHz SPT
map. Multiband optical images from the BCS survey demonstrate significant
concentrations of similarly colored galaxies at the positions of the SZ
detections. Photometric redshift estimates from the BCS data indicate that two
of the clusters lie at moderate redshift (z ~ 0.4) and two at high redshift (z
>~ 0.8). One of the SZ detections was previously identified as a galaxy cluster
using X-ray data from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS). Potential RASS
counterparts (not previously identified as clusters) are also found for two of
the new discoveries. These first four galaxy clusters are the most significant
SZ detections from a subset of the ongoing SPT survey. As such, they serve as a
demonstration that SZ surveys, and the SPT in particular, can be an effective
means for finding galaxy clusters.
