On foliations of bounded mean curvature on closed three-dimensional Riemannian manifolds

The notion of systole of a foliation sys(ℱ) on an arbitrary foliated closed Riemannian manifold (M,ℱ) is introduced. A lower bound on sys(ℱ) of a bounded mean curvature foliation is given. As a corollary we prove that the number of Reeb components of a bounded mean curvature foliation on a closed oriented Riemannian 3-manifold M is bounded above by a constant depending on the volume, the radius of injectivity, and the maximum value of the sectional curvature of the manifold M.