FANO MANIFOLDS AND BLOW-UPS OF LOW-DIMENSIONAL SUBVARIETIES

We study Fano manifolds of pseudoindex greater than one and dimension greater than five, which are blow-ups of smooth varieties along smooth centers of dimension equal to the pseudoindex of the manifold. We obtain a classification of the possible cones of curves of these manifolds, and we prove that there is only one such manifold without a fiber type elementary contraction.