  Thanks to the recent availability of large surveys, there has been renewed
interest in third-order correlation statistics. Measures of third-order
clustering are sensitive to the structure of filaments and voids in the
universe and are useful for studying large-scale structure. Thus, statistics of
these third-order measures can be used to test and constrain parameters in
cosmological models. Third-order measures such as the three-point correlation
function are now commonly estimated for galaxy surveys. Studies of third-order
clustering of absorption systems will complement these analyses. We define a
statistic, which we denote K, that measures third-order clustering of a data
set of point observations and focus on estimating this statistic for an
absorber catalog. The statistic K can be considered a third-order version of
the second-order Ripley K-function and allows one to study the abundance of
various configurations of point triplets. In particular, configurations
consisting of point triplets that lie close to a straight line can be examined.
Studying third-order clustering of absorbers requires consideration of the
absorbers as a three-dimensional process, observed on QSO lines of sight that
extend radially in three-dimensional space from Earth. Since most of this
three-dimensional space is not probed by the lines of sight, edge corrections
become important. We use an analytical form of edge correction weights and
construct an estimator of the statistic K for use with an absorber catalog. We
show that with these weights, ratio-unbiased estimates of K can be obtained.
Results from a simulation study also verify unbiasedness and provide
information on the decrease of standard errors with increasing number of lines
of sight.
