Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2010
In this article we prove the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states for the potential and the class of non-uniformly hyperbolic horseshoes which was introduced in Rios [Unfolding homoclinic tangencies inside horseshoes: hyperbolicity, fractal dimensions and persistent tangencies. Nonlinearity14 (2001), 431–462]. We show that the pressure t↦𝒫(t) for −tlog Ju is real-analytic on . We give the exact equations of the two asymptotes to the graph of 𝒫(t) at ±∞ and we prove that these non-uniformly hyperbolic horseshoes do not have measures which minimize the unstable Lyapunov exponent.