Equidistribution of the zeros of higher order derivatives in polynomial dynamics

Abstract: For every $m\in\mathbb{N}$, we establish the convergence of the averaged distributions of the zeros of the $m$-th order derivatives $(f^n)^{(m)}$ of the iterated polynomials $f^n$ of a polynomial $f\in\mathbb{C}[z]$ of degree $>1$ towards the harmonic measure of the filled-in Julia set of $f$ with pole at $\infty$ as $n\to+\infty$, when $f$ has no exceptional points in $\mathbb{C}$. This complements our former study on the zeros of $(f^n)^{(m)}-a$ for any value $a\in\mathbb{C}\setminus{0}$. The key in the proof is an approximation of the higher order derivatives of a solution of the Schr\"oder or Abel functional equations for a meromorphic function on $\mathbb{C}$ with a locally uniform non-trivial error estimate.