Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2010
Let n>m≥1 be two integers. At first we obtain general results for the multifractal analysis of the orthogonal projections on m-dimensional linear subspaces of singular measures μ on ℝn satisfying the multifractal formalism. The results hold for γn,m-almost every such subspace, where γn,m is the uniform measure on the Grassmannian manifold Gn,m. Let μ be such a measure and suppose that its upper Hausdorff dimension is less than or equal to m. Let I stand for the interval over which the singularity spectrum of μ is increasing. We prove that there exists a non-trivial subinterval of I such that for every , for γn,m-almost every m-dimensional subspace V, the multifractal formalism holds at α for μV, the orthogonal projection of μ on V. Moreover, in some cases the result is optimal in the sense that the interval is maximal in I. Also, we determine the Lq-spectrum τμV(q) on the minimal interval J necessary to recover the singularity spectrum of μV over as the Legendre transform of τμV. The interval J and the function τμV(q) do not depend on V, and τμV(q) can differ from τμ on a non-trivial interval. For Gibbs measures and some of their discrete counterparts, we show the stronger uniform result: for γn,m-almost every m-dimensional subspace V, the multifractal formalism holds for μV over the whole interval . As an application, we obtain a part of the singularity spectrum of some self-similar measures on attractors of iterated function systems which do not satisfy the weak separation condition.