Small Furstenberg sets (Q1941103)

The authors study dimension properties of Furstenberg-type sets. In particular, they use generalized Hausdorff measures to construct very small Furstenberg sets in a given class. The definition of Furstenberg sets in the setting of a dimension function \(h\), as given in Subsection 1.2, is: a set \(E\subset \mathbb{R}^2\) is called a Furstenberg set of type \(h\) (or an \(F_h\)-set) if, for each direction \(e\) in the unit circle, there is a line segment \(l_e\) in the direction of \(e\) such that the \(h\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure of the set \(l_e\cap E\) is strictly positive. In a previous work by the same authors, it was shown that the appropriate dimension function for an \(F_h\)-set \(E\) must not be dimensionally much smaller than \(h^2\) and \(h\sqrt{\cdot}\). More specifically, in that same paper, the authors proved that for zero-dimensional Furstenberg type sets \(E\) belonging to \(F_{h_{\gamma}}\) holds \(\dim_{H}(E)\geq 1/2\), where \(h_{\gamma}=\log^{-\gamma}\left(\frac{1}{x}\right)\) for \(\gamma>0\). In the present paper, the authors show that, for any given \(\gamma>0\), there exists a set \(E_{\gamma}\subset\mathbb{R}^2\) such that \( E_{\gamma}\in F_{h_{\gamma}}\) and \(\dim_H(E_{\gamma})\leq 1/2\). As a result, the value \(1/2\) is the sharp dimension estimate for the whole class of Furstenberg sets associated to the zero-dimensional functions \(h_{\gamma}\).