Cycle up-down permutations

Abstract

A permutation is defined to be cycle-up-down if it is a product of cycles that, when written starting with their smallest element, have an up-down pattern. We prove bijectively and analytically that these permutations are enumerated by the Euler numbers, and we study the distribution of some statistics on them, as well as on up-down permutations, on all permutations, and on a generalization of cycle-up-down permutations. The statistics include the number of cycles of even and odd length, the number of left-to-right minima, and the number of extreme elements.