Mumford's example and a general construction (Q916738)

Mumford had constructed an example of a non-ample line bundle on a ruled surface whose restriction to any integral curve is ample. The author generalises this result to higher dimensions as follows: Theorem: Let V be a vector bundle of rank \(r\) \((r\in {\mathbb{N}}^+)\) on a compact Riemann surface C, \(X={\mathbb{P}}(V)\) ruled variety, \(L={\mathcal O}_{{\mathbb{P}}(V)}(1)\). Assume that V is associated to a representation of the fundamental group of C in SU(r) such that its image is dense in SU(r) (for any r, there exist many such representations). Then, L is not ample on X but its restriction to any proper subvariety is ample. The line bundle L is further used to produce a rank two vector bundle which is Bogomolov stable but whose restriction to proper subvarieties is Bogomolov instable, contrary to the restriction theorem for Mumford stability (due to A. Ramanathan and Mehta). An offshot of the author's construction is a new proof of the result (due to Hartshorne) that a stable bundle of positive degree on a nonsingular curve is ample.