A non-additive thermodynamic formalism and applications to dimension theory of hyperbolic dynamical systems

A non-additive version of the thermodynamic formalism is developed. This allows us to obtain lower and upper bounds for the dimension of a broad class of Cantor-like sets. These are constructed with a decreasing sequence of closed sets that may satisfy no asymptotic behavior. Moreover, they can be coded by arbitrary symbolic dynamics, and the geometry of the construction may depend on all the symbolic past. Applications include estimates of dimension for hyperbolic sets of maps that need not be differentiable.