We consider weighted sums over points of lattice polytopes, where the weight of a point v is the monomial qλ(v) for some linear form λ. We propose a q-analogue of the classical theory of Ehrhart series and Ehrhart polynomials, including Ehrhart reciprocity and involving evaluation at the q-integers. The main novelty is the proposal to consider q-Ehrhart polynomials. This general theory is then applied to the special case of order polytopes associated with partially ordered sets. Some more specific properties are described in the case of empty polytopes.

In previous work by Coates, Galkin and the authors, the notion of mutation between lattice polytopes was introduced. Such mutations give rise to a deformation between the corresponding toric varieties. In this paper we study one-step mutations that correspond to deformations between weighted projective planes, giving a complete characterization of such mutations in terms of T-singularities. We also show that the weights involved satisfy Diophantine equations, generalizing results of Hacking and Prokhorov.

Let $d$ and $n$ be positive integers such that $n\geq d+ 1$ and ${\tau }_{1} , \ldots , {\tau }_{n} $ integers such that ${\tau }_{1} \lt \cdots \lt {\tau }_{n} $. Let ${C}_{d} ({\tau }_{1} , \ldots , {\tau }_{n} )\subset { \mathbb{R} }^{d} $ denote the cyclic polytope of dimension $d$ with $n$ vertices $({\tau }_{1} , { \tau }_{1}^{2} , \ldots , { \tau }_{1}^{d} ), \ldots , ({\tau }_{n} , { \tau }_{n}^{2} , \ldots , { \tau }_{n}^{d} )$. We are interested in finding the smallest integer ${\gamma }_{d} $ such that if ${\tau }_{i+ 1} - {\tau }_{i} \geq {\gamma }_{d} $ for $1\leq i\lt n$, then ${C}_{d} ({\tau }_{1} , \ldots , {\tau }_{n} )$ is normal. One of the known results is ${\gamma }_{d} \leq d(d+ 1)$. In the present paper a new inequality ${\gamma }_{d} \leq {d}^{2} - 1$ is proved. Moreover, it is shown that if $d\geq 4$ with ${\tau }_{3} - {\tau }_{2} = 1$, then ${C}_{d} ({\tau }_{1} , \ldots , {\tau }_{n} )$ is not very ample.