Invariants of contact structures from open books
Joint work with Burak Ozbagci.
To appear in Trans.~Amer.~Math.~Soc.

In this note we define three invariants of contact structures in terms of open books supporting the contact structures. These invariants are the support genus (which is the minimal genus of a page of a supporting open book for the contact structure), the binding number (which is the minimal number of binding components of a supporting open book for the contact structure with minimal genus pages) and the norm (which is minus the maximal Euler characteristic of a page of a supporting open book).

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