Detection of network structure in the Las Campanas Redshift Survey

We employ a percolation technique developed for pointwise distributions to analyze two-dimensional projections of the three northern and three souther n slices in the Las Campanas Redshift Survey. One of the goals of this pape r is to compare the visual impressions of the structure within distribution s with objective statistical analysis. We track the growth of the largest c luster as an indicator of the network structure. We restrict our analysis t o volume-limited subsamples in the regions from 200 to 400 h(-1) Mpc, where the number density of galaxies is the highest. As a major result, we repor t a measurement of an unambiguous signal with a high signal-to-noise ratio (at least at the level of a few sigma sigma), indicating significant connec tivity of the galaxy distribution which in two dimensions is indicative of a filamentary distribution. This is in general agreement with the visual im pression and typical for the standard theory of the large-scale structure f ormation based on gravitational instability of initially Gaussian density f luctuations.