Thermodynamic formalism for invariant measures in iterated function systems with overlaps

Abstract

We study images of equilibrium (Gibbs) states for a class of non-invertible transformations associated to conformal iterated function systems with overlaps $\mathcal S$. We prove exact dimensionality for these image measures, and find a dimension formula using their overlap numbers. In particular, we obtain a geometric formula for the dimension of self-conformal measures for iterated function systems with overlaps, in terms of the overlap numbers. This implies a necessary and sufficient condition for dimension drop. If $\nu = \pi_*\mu$ is a self-conformal measure, then $HD(\nu) < \frac{h(\mu)}{|\chi(\mu)|}$ if and only if the overlap number $o(\mathcal S, \mu) > 1$. Examples are also discussed.