Higher order angular galaxy correlations in the SDSS: Redshift and color dependence of nonlinear bias

We present estimates of the N-point galaxy, area-averaged, angular correlation functions (omega) over bar (N)(theta) for N 2,..., 7 for galaxies from the fifth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our parent sample is selected from galaxies with 18 <= r < 21 and is the largest ever used to study higher order correlations. We subdivide this parent sample into two volume-limited samples using photometric redshifts, and these two samples are further subdivided by magnitude, redshift, and color (producing early-and late-type galaxy samples) to determine the dependence of (omega) over bar (N)(theta) on luminosity, redshift, and galaxy type. We measure (omega) over bar (N)(theta) using oversampling techniques and use them to calculate the projected sN. Using models derived from theoretical power spectra and perturbation theory, we measure the bias parameters b(1) and c(2), finding that the large differences in both bias parameters (b(1) and c(2)) between early- and late-type galaxies are robust against changes in redshift, luminosity, and sigma(8), and that both terms are consistently smaller for late-type galaxies. By directly comparing their higher order correlation measurements, we find large differences in the clustering of late-type galaxies at redshifts lower than 0.3 and those at redshifts higher than 0.3, both at large scales (c(2) is larger by similar to 0.5 at z > 0.3) and small scales (large amplitudes are measured at small scales only for z > 0.3, suggesting much more merger-driven star formation at z > 0.3). Finally, our measurements of c(2) suggest both that sigma(8) < 0.8 and that c(2) is negative.