Baryon acoustic oscillations signature in the three-point angular correlation function from the SDSS-DR12 quasar survey

ABSTRACT The clustering properties of the Universe at large scales are currently being probed at various redshifts through several cosmological tracers and with diverse statistical estimators. Here we use the three-point angular correlation function (3PACF) to probe the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) features in the quasars catalogue from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 12, with mean redshift $\overline{z} = 2.225$, detecting the BAO imprint with a statistical significance of $2.9 \sigma$, obtained using lognormal mocks. Following a quasi-model-independent approach for the 3PACF, we find the BAO transversal signature for triangles with sides θ1 = $1{^{\circ}_{.}}0$ and θ2 = $1{^{\circ}_{.}}5$ and the angle between them of α = 1.59 ± 0.17 rad, a value that corresponds to the angular BAO scale $\theta_{\rm BAO}=1{^{\circ}_{.}}82 \pm 0{^{\circ}_{.}}21$, in excellent agreement with the value found in a recent work ($\theta_{\rm BAO}=1{^{\circ}_{.}}77 \pm 0{^{\circ}_{.}}31$) applying the two-point angular correlation function (2PACF) to similar data. Moreover, we performed two types of test: one to confirm the robustness of the BAO signal in the 3PACF through random displacements in the data set, and the other to verify the suitability of our random samples, a null test that in fact does not show any signature that could bias our results.