The correlation dimension of the Sierpinski carpet

We compute the correlation dimension of a measure defined on a general Sierpinski carpet. We relate this function to a free energy function associated to a partition composed of ‘nearly squares’ and well fitted to the planar Cantor set. Actually, we prove that these functions are real analytic on , are strictly increasing and are strictly concave (respectively linear in the degenerate case). This is an example of a two-dimensional dynamical system contracting in the two directions with different ratios. We first study measures of Gibbsian type before generalizing to Markovian measures.