Context :

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 two-point correlation function and allowing to shed light on biasing , nonlinear 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 50000 galaxies with B-band magnitudes in the range -21.6 \lesssim M _ { B } -5 \log ( h ) \lesssim - 19.9 and stellar masses in the range 9.8 \lesssim \log ( M _ { \star } [ h ^ { -2 } M _ { \odot } ] ) \lesssim 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 } \mbox { Mpc } ] < 20 .

Results : We find a significant dependence of the reduced 3PCF on scales and triangle shapes , with stronger anisotropy at larger scales ( r \sim 10 h ^ { -1 } \mbox { Mpc } ) and an almost flat trend at smaller scales , r \sim 2.5 h ^ { -1 } \mbox { 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 .

Conclusions :