Uniformity of Lyapunov exponents for non-invertible matrices

Let $\mathbf{M}=(M_{1},\ldots ,M_{k})$ be a tuple of real $d\times d$ matrices. Under certain irreducibility assumptions, we give checkable criteria for deciding whether $\mathbf{M}$ possesses the following property: there exist two constants $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\in \mathbb{R}$ and $C>0$ such that for any $n\in \mathbb{N}$ and any $i_{1},\ldots ,i_{n}\in \{1,\ldots ,k\}$, either $M_{i_{1}}\cdots M_{i_{n}}=\mathbf{0}$ or $C^{-1}e^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}n}\leq \Vert M_{i_{1}}\cdots M_{i_{n}}\Vert \leq Ce^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}n}$, where $\Vert \cdot \Vert$ is a matrix norm. The proof is based on symbolic dynamics and the thermodynamic formalism for matrix products. As applications, we are able to check the absolute continuity of a class of overlapping self-similar measures on $\mathbb{R}$, the absolute continuity of certain self-affine measures in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ and the dimensional regularity of a class of sofic affine-invariant sets in the plane.