 Determinant line bundle

The top exterior power of a rank-$r$ vector bundle is its determinant line bundle. A short exact sequence of vector bundles gives a canonical isomorphism of the middle determinant with the tensor product of the other two. Locally, a subbundle frame followed by lifts of a quotient frame defines it; changing lifts only adds off-diagonal blocks. This is the determinant step in adjunction for a smooth submanifold.