We investigate ideals in a polynomial ring which are generated by powers of linear forms. Such ideals are closely related to the theories of fat point ideals, Cox rings, and box splines.
We pay special attention to a family of power ideals that arises naturally from a hyperplane arrangement
A
\mathcal {A}
. We prove that their Hilbert series are determined by the combinatorics of
A
\mathcal {A}
and can be computed from its Tutte polynomial. We also obtain formulas for the Hilbert series of certain closely related fat point ideals and zonotopal Cox rings.
Our work unifies and generalizes results due to Dahmen-Micchelli, Holtz-Ron, Postnikov-Shapiro-Shapiro, and Sturmfels-Xu, among others. It also settles a conjecture of Holtz-Ron on the spline interpolation of functions on the lattice points of a zonotope.