Criteria for equidistribution of solutions of word equations on SL(2)

We study equidistribution of solutions of word equations of the form w(x,y)=g in the family of finite groups SL(2,q). We provide criteria for equidistribution in terms of the trace polynomial of w. This allows us to get an explicit description of certain classes of words possessing the equidistribution property and show that this property is generic within these classes.