The $L^q$-spectrum for a class of self-similar measures with overlap

It is known that the heuristic principle, referred to as the multifractal formalism, need not hold for self-similar measures with overlap, such as the $3$-fold convolution of the Cantor measure and certain Bernoulli convolutions. In this paper we study an important function in the multifractal theory, the $L^{q}$-spectrum, $tau (q)$, for measures of finite type, a class of self-similar measures that includes these examples. Corresponding to each measure, we introduce finitely many variants on the $% L^{q}$-spectrum which arise naturally from the finite type structure and are often easier to understand than $tau $. We show that $tau$ is always bounded by the minimum of these variants and is equal to the minimum variant for $qgeq 0$. This particular variant coincides with the $L^{q}$-spectrum of the measure $mu$ restricted to appropriate subsets of its support. If the IFS satisfies particular structural properties, which do hold for the above examples, then $tau$ is shown to be the minimum of these variants for all $q$. Under certain assumptions on the local dimensions of $mu$, we prove that the minimum variant for $q ll 0$ coincides with the straight line having slope equal to the maximum local dimension of $mu $. Again, this is the case with the examples above. More generally, bounds are given for $tau$ and its variants in terms of notions closely related to the local dimensions of $mu $.