A Metric on the Contactomorphism Group of an Orderable Contact Manifold

We discuss some properties of a pseudo-metric on the contactomorphism group of a strict contact manifold M induced by the maximum/minimum of Hamiltonians. We show that it is non-degenerate if and only if M is orderable and that its metric topology agrees with the interval topology introduced by Chernov and Nemirovski. We also discuss analogous results on isotopy classes of Legendrian submanifolds and on universal covers.