Chandra Discovery of the Intracluster Medium around UM 425 at a Redshift of 1.47

We report on a discovery of a candidate cluster of galaxies at redshiftz=1.47 based on Chandra observations in the field of quasars UM425 A & B. Wedetect with high significance diffuse emission due the intracluster hot gasaround the quasar pair. This is the second highest redshift cluster candidateafter 3C294 at z=1.786. The diffuse emission is elliptical in shape with about17" extent. If indeed at z=1.47, this corresponds to a physical size of 140h_{70}^{-1} Kpc and 2--10 keV luminosity of about 3 times 10^{43} erg/s. Thecluster is unlikely to be the long sought gravitational lens invoked to explainunusual brightness of UM425 A and the close quasar pair. Coexistence of thequasars with the cluster suggests a link of activity to cluster environment.The unusual brightness of UM425 A may then be due to a higher accretion rate.We also comment briefly on the X-ray spectra of UM 425 A & B which also happento be broad absorption line quasars. We argue that present evidence suggeststhat the quasars are just a pair and not lensed images of the same quasar.Comment: Submitted to ApJ Letter