The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS): Exploring the dependence of the three-point correlation function on stellar mass and luminosity at 0.5 < z < 1.1

Aims. The three-point correlation function (3PCF) is a powerful probe to investigate the clustering of matter in the Universe in a complementary way with respect to lower-order statistics, providing additional information with respect to the two-point correlation function and allowing us to shed light on biasing, non-linear processes, and deviations from Gaussian statistics. In this paper, we analyse the first data release of the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS), determining the dependence of the three-point correlation function on luminosity and stellar mass at z = [0.5; 1.1]. Methods. We exploit the VIPERS Public Data Release 1, consisting of more than 50 000 galaxies with B-band magnitudes in the range -21.6 less than or similar to M-B = 5 log(h) less than or similar to -19.9 and stellar masses in the range 9.8 less than or similar to log(M-star [h(-2) M-circle dot]) less than or similar to 10.7. We measure both the connected 3PCF and the reduced 3PCF in redshift space, probing different configurations and scales, in the range 2.5 < r [h(-1) Mpc] < 20. Results. We find a significant dependence of the reduced 3PCF on scales and triangle shapes, with stronger anisotropy at larger scales (r similar to 10 h(-1) Mpc) and an almost flat trend at smaller scales, r similar to 2.5 h(-1) Mpc. Massive and luminous galaxies present a larger connected 3PCF, while the reduced 3PCF is remarkably insensitive to magnitude and stellar masses in the range we explored. These trends, already observed at low redshifts, are confirmed for the first time to be still valid up to z = 1.1, providing support to the hierarchical scenario for which massive and bright systems are expected to be more clustered. The possibility of using the measured 3PCF to provide independent constraints on the linear galaxy bias b has also been explored, showing promising results in agreement with other probes..