Generic equidistribution of periodic orbits for area-preserving surface maps

Abstract: We prove that a $C^{\infty}$-generic area-preserving diffeomorphism of a closed, oriented surface admits a sequence of equidistributed periodic orbits. This is a quantitative refinement of the recently established generic density theorem for area-preserving surface diffeomorphisms. The proof has two ingredients. The first is a "Weyl law" for PFH spectral invariants, which was used to prove the generic density theorem. The second is a variational argument inspired by the work of Marques-Neves-Song and Irie on equidistribution results for minimal hypersurfaces and three-dimensional Reeb flows, respectively.