Binary Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Evidence for Excess Clustering on Small Scales

We present a sample of 218 new quasar pairs with proper transverse separations Rₚrop 3 Mpc/h quasar correlation function, extrapolated down as a power law to the separations probed by our binaries. The excess grows to ~ 30 at Rₚrop ~ 10 kpc/h, and provides compelling evidence that the quasar autocorrelation function gets progressively steeper on sub-Mpc scales. This small scale excess can likely be attributed to dissipative interaction events which trigger quasar activity in rich environments. Recent small scale measurements of galaxy clustering and quasar-galaxy clustering are reviewed and discussed in relation to our measurement of small scale quasar clustering.