Odd length: Odd diagrams and descent classes

Abstract We define and study odd analogues of classical geometric and combinatorial objects associated to permutations, namely odd Schubert varieties, odd diagrams, and odd inversion sets. We show that there is a bijection between odd inversion sets of permutations and acyclic orientations of the Turan graph, that the dimension of the odd Schubert variety associated to a permutation is the odd length of the permutation, and give several necessary conditions for a subset of [ n ] × [ n ] to be the odd diagram of a permutation. We also study the sign-twisted generating function of the odd length over descent classes of the symmetric groups.