Phase transitions for the multifractal analysis of self-similar measures

We study the multifractal analysis of a class of self-similar measures with overlaps. This class, for which we obtain explicit formulae for the L^q spectrum tau(q) as well as the singularity spectrum f(alpha), is sufficiently large to point out new phenomena concerning the multifractal structure of self-similar measures. We show, that unlike the classical quasi-Bernoulli case, the L^q spectrum can have an arbitrarely large number of non-differentiability points (phase transitions). These singularities occur only for the negative values of q and yield to measures that do not satisfy the multifractal formalism. The weak quasi-Bernoulli property is the key point of most of the arguments.