Informally, self-similar objects with parameters
and
are described by a power law such as
where
is the "dimension" of the scaling law, known as the Hausdorff dimension.
Formally, let
be a subset of a metric space
. Then the Hausdorff dimension
of
is the infimum of
such that the
-dimensional Hausdorff measure
of
is 0 (which need not be an integer).
In many cases, the Hausdorff dimension correctly describes the correction term for a resonator with fractal perimeter in Lorentz's conjecture. However, in general, the proper dimension to use turns out to be the Minkowski-Bouligand dimension (Schroeder 1991).