3-POINT CORRELATION-FUNCTION IN THE QUASI-LINEAR REGIME

Using the second-order Eulerian perturbation theory (SEPT), we study t he three-point correlation function zeta in the quasilinear regime for the SCDM, LCDM and MDM models, with the interesting result that these three models have distinctive three-point correlation functions. We t est this SEPT prediction using a large set of high-resolution N-body s imulations. The N-body results show that the SEPT prediction for zeta is not accurate even in the quasilinear regime (r less than or similar to 10 h(-1) Mpc), in contrast to previous N-body tests on the skewnes s. However, similar to the perturbation theory, our N-body results sti ll predict a strong dependence of the three-point correlation on the t riangle shape which is observable in the distribution of galaxies if t he galaxies trace the distribution of the underlying mass.