The visible part of plane self-similar sets

Abstract

Given a compact subset F of R2, the visible part VθF of F from direction θ is the set of x in F such that the half-line from x in direction θ intersects F only at x. It is suggested that if dimH F ≥ 1 then dimH VθF = 1 for almost all θ , where dimH denotes Hausdorff dimension. We conrm this when F is a self-similar set satisfying the convex open set condition and such that the orthogonal projection of F onto every line is an interval. In particular the underlying similarities may involve arbitrary rotations and F need not be connected.