Average decay of the Fourier transform of measures with applications

We consider spherical averages of the Fourier transform of fractal measures and improve both the upper and lower bounds on the rate of decay. Maximal estimates with respect to fractal measures are deduced for the Schr"odinger and wave equations. This refines the almost everywhere convergence of the solution to its initial datum as time tends to zero. A consequence is that the solution to the wave equation cannot diverge on a $(d-1)$-dimensional manifold if the data belongs to the energy space $\dot{H}^1($\mathbb{R}$^d)\times L^2($\mathbb{R}$^d)$.