Integral homology of real isotropic and odd orthogonal Grassmannians

Abstract

We obtain a combinatorial expression for the coefficients of the boundary map of real isotropic and odd orthogonal Grassmannians providing a natural generalization of the formulas already obtained for Lagrangian and maximal isotropic Grassmannians. The results are given in terms of the classification into four types of covering pairs among the Schubert cells when identified with signed $k$-Grassmannian permutations. It turns out that these coefficients only depend on the positions changed over each pair of permutations. As an application, we give an orientability criterion, exhibit a symmetry of these coefficients and, compute low-dimensional homology groups.