On Monge-Amp\`ere volumes of direct images

This paper is devoted to the study of the asymptotics of Monge-Amp\`ere volumes of direct images associated with high tensor powers of an ample line bundle. We study the leading term of this asymptotics and provide a classification of bundles saturating the topological bound of Demailly. In the special case of high symmetric powers of ample vector bundles, this provides a characterization of vector bundles admitting projectively flat Hermitian structures.