Slicing Theorems and rigidity phenomena for self affine carpets

Abstract: Let $F$ be a Bedford-McMullen carpet defined by independent exponents. We prove that $\overline{\dim}_B (\ell \cap F) \leq \max \lbrace \dim^* F -1,0 \rbrace$ for all lines $\ell$ not parallel to the principal axes, where $\dim^*$ is Furstenberg's star dimension (maximal dimension of a microset). We also prove several rigidity results for incommensurable Bedford-McMullen carpets, that is, carpets $F$ and $E$ such that all defining exponents are independent: Assuming various conditions, we find bounds on the dimension of the intersection of such carpets, show that self affine measures on them are mutually singular, and prove that they do not embed affinely into each other. We obtain these results as an application of a slicing Theorem for products of certain Cantor sets. This Theorem is a generlization of the results of Shmerkin and Wu, that proved Furstenberg's slicing Conjecture.