In this paper varieties are always assumed to be defined over the field [Copf ] of complex numbers.

Given a smooth projective variety Z, the classification of smooth projective varieties X containing Z as an ample divisor occupies an extremely important position in the theory of polarized varieties and it is well-known that the structure of Z imposes severe restrictions on that of X. Inspired by this philosophy, we set up the following condition ([midast ]) in [LM1] in order to generalize several results on ample divisors to ample vector bundles:

([midast ]) [Escr ] is an ample vector bundle of rank r [ges ] 2 on a smooth projective variety X of dimension n such that there exists a global section s ∈ Γ([Escr ]) whose zero locus Z = (s)0 is a smooth subvariety of X of dimension n − r [ges ] 1.