Computing points of small height for cubic polynomials (Q2390627)

For a polynomial \(\phi\in Q[X]\) with \(\deg\phi=d\geq2\) denote by \(\hat h_\phi\) the associated canonical height and let \(h\) denote the arithmetic height. The canonical weight vanishes at the preperiodic points of \(\phi\) and it is conjectured that for other rational points \(x\) the ratio \(\hat h_\phi(x)/h(x)\) is bounded from below by a positive value depending only on \(d\). The authors give support for this conjecture by searching for points with small such ratio for several billion cubic polynomials \(\phi\).