Square Sierpiński carpets and Lattès maps

We prove that every quasisymmetric homeomorphism of a standard square Sierpinski carpet $$S_p$$ , $$p\ge 3$$ odd, is an isometry. This strengthens and completes earlier work by the authors (Bonk and Merenkov in Ann Math (2) 177:591–643, 2013, Theorem 1.2). We also show that a similar conclusion holds for quasisymmetries of the double of $$S_p$$ across the outer peripheral circle. Finally, as an application of the techniques developed in this paper, we prove that no standard square carpet $$S_p$$ is quasisymmetrically equivalent to the Julia set of a postcritically-finite rational map.