Structure of equilibrium states on self-affine sets and strict monotonicity of affinity dimension

TL;DR

This paper characterizes the structure of equilibrium states related to the Hausdorff dimension of self-affine sets, especially in three dimensions, and proves a dimension reduction property when removing an affine map.

Contribution

It provides a complete description of equilibrium states in three dimensions and introduces a new condition for their uniqueness in higher dimensions.

Findings

Equilibrium states in 3D are fully supported.

Removing an affine map reduces the Hausdorff dimension.

A new sufficient condition for uniqueness of equilibrium states in higher dimensions.

Abstract

A fundamental problem in the dimension theory of self-affine sets is the construction of high-dimensional measures which yield sharp lower bounds for the Hausdorff dimension of the set. A natural strategy for the construction of such high-dimensional measures is to investigate measures of maximal Lyapunov dimension; these measures can be alternatively interpreted as equilibrium states of the singular value function introduced by Falconer. Whilst the existence of these equilibrium states has been well-known for some years their structure has remained elusive, particularly in dimensions higher than two. In this article we give a complete description of the equilibrium states of the singular value function in the three-dimensional case, showing in particular that all such equilibrium states must be fully supported. In higher dimensions we also give a new sufficient condition for the uniqueness of these equilibrium states. As a corollary, giving a solution to a folklore open question in dimension three, we prove that for a typical self-affine set in $\mathbb{R}^3$, removing one of the affine maps which defines the set results in a strict reduction of the Hausdorff dimension.