Equidistribution and generalized Mahler measures

Lucien Szpiro, Thomas J. Tucker

Published 2005-10-19, updated 2007-04-10Version 3

Let g be a nonconstant rational map from the projective line to itself that has degree greater than one and is defined over a number field. The map g gives rise to generalized Mahler measures for polynomials in one variable. We use diophantine approximation to show that the generalized Mahler measure of a polynomial F at a place v can be computed by averaging the log of the v-adic absolute value of F over the periodic points of g. This allows us to compute canonical heights of algebraic points via equidistribution on periodic points.