THE LARGE-SCALE THREE-POINT CORRELATION FUNCTION OF SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY LUMINOUS RED GALAXIES

We present new measurements of the redshift-space three-point correlation function (3PCF) of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Using the largest data set to date, the Data Release 7 LRGs, and an improved binning scheme compared to previous measurements, we measure the LRG 3PCF on large scales up to ∼90 h-1 Mpc, from the mildly nonlinear to quasi-linear regimes. Comparing the LRG correlations to the dark matter two- and three-point correlation functions, obtained from N-body simulations we infer linear and nonlinear bias parameters. As expected, LRGs are highly biased tracers of large-scale structure, with a linear bias b1 ∼ 2; the LRGs also have a large positive nonlinear bias parameter, in agreement with predictions of galaxy population models. The use of the 3PCF to estimate biasing helps to also make estimates of the cosmological parameter σ8, as well as to infer best-fit parameters of the halo occupation distribution parameters for LRGs. We also use a large suite of public mock catalogs to characterize the error covariance matrix for the 3PCF and compare the variance among simulation results with jackknife error estimates.