It is shown that fractional derivatives of the (integrated) invariant measure
of the Feigenbaum map at the onset of chaos have power-law tails in their
cumulative distributions, whose exponents can be related to the spectrum of
singularities f(α). This is a new way of characterizing multifractality
in dynamical systems, so far applied only to multifractal random functions
(Frisch and Matsumoto (J. Stat. Phys. 108:1181, 2002)). The relation between
the thermodynamic approach (Vul, Sinai and Khanin (Russian Math. Surveys 39:1,
1984)) and that based on singularities of the invariant measures is also
examined. The theory for fractional derivatives is developed from a heuristic
point view and tested by very accurate simulations.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, J.Stat.Phys. in pres