Fourier restriction estimates based on $L^q$-dimensions: beyond Stein--Tomas

The well-known Stein--Tomas restriction theorem gives the sharp range of $p$ for which $L^p\to L^2$ restriction estimates hold for the surface measure on the sphere. This was generalised to arbitrary measures satisfying certain Fourier decay and Frostman conditions by Mockenhaupt, Mitsis, and Bak--Seeger, with the most general version now a fundamental result in harmonic analysis. The Frostman condition essentially asks for uniform control on the measure of small balls and is the endpoint of a continuum of more nuanced conditions which describe the local fluctuations of the measure. This analysis gives rise to the $L^q$-dimensions of a measure and these are a central concept in fractal geometry and a crucial tool in multifractal analysis and the theory of large deviations. In this paper we prove a new Fourier restriction theorem which uses the $L^q$-dimensions instead of the Frostman condition, thus providing a continuum of estimates which recover Stein--Tomas at the endpoint. Our proof gives the endpoint estimate for all values of $q\in(1,\infty]$ via Stein's complex interpolation. In particular, in the case $q=\infty$ this partially resolves a question raised by Bak and Seeger. We explore when our theorem improves on Stein--Tomas, that is, when the range is not optimised at $q=\infty$, and show that this is the case quite generally, including for certain Mandelbrot cascade measures and measures with multifractal behaviour. On the way to proving our main theorem we obtain a novel description of the $L^q$-dimensions based on certain convolution norms, which may be of interest in its own right.