On measures that improve $L^q$ dimension under convolution

The $L^q$ dimensions, for $1<q<\infty$, quantify the degree of smoothness of a measure. We study the following problem on the real line: when does the $L^q$ dimension improve under convolution? This can be seen as a variant of the well-known $L^p$-improving property. Our main result asserts that uniformly perfect measures (which include Ahlfors-regular measures as a proper subset) have the property that convolving with them results in a strict increase of the $L^q$ dimension. We also study the case $q=\infty$, which corresponds to the supremum of the Frostman exponents of the measure. We obtain consequences for repeated convolutions and for the box dimension of sumsets. Our results are derived from an inverse theorem for the $L^q$ norms of convolutions due to the second author.