Geometry of the Normal Bundle of a Submanifold*

 We study the geometric behavior of the normal bundle T ^⊥ M of a submanifold M of a Riemannian manifold . We compute explicitely the second fundamental form of T ^⊥ M and look at the relation between the minimality of T ^⊥ M and M. Finally we show that the Maslov forms with respect to a suitable connection of the pair (T ^⊥ M, are null. Received March 14, 2001; in revised form February 11, 2002