Abstract
The usual thermodynamic formalism is uniform in all directions and, therefore, it is not adapted to study multi-dimensional functions with various directional behaviors. It is based on a scaling function characterized in terms of isotropic Sobolev or Besov-type norms. The purpose of the present paper was twofold. Firstly, we proved wavelet criteria for a natural extended directional scaling function expressed in terms of directional Sobolev or Besov spaces. Secondly, we performed the directional multifractal formalism, i.e., we computed or estimated directional Holder spectra, either directly or via some Legendre transforms on either directional scaling function or anisotropic scaling functions. We obtained general upper bounds for directional Holder spectra. We also showed optimal results for two large classes of examples of deterministic and random anisotropic self-similar tools for possible modeling turbulence (or cascades) and textures in images: Sierpinski cascade functions and fractional Brownian sheets.