On the Duals of Segre Varieties

The reflexivity, the (semi-)ordinariness, the dimension of dual varieties and the structure of Gauss maps are discussed for Segre varieties, where a Segre variety is the image of the product of two or more projective spaces under Segre embedding. A generalization is given to a theorem of A. Hefez and A. Thorup on Segre varieties of two projective spaces. In particular, a new proof is given to a theorem of F. Knop, G. Menzel, I. M. Gelfand, M. M. Kapranov and A. V. Zelevinsky that states a necessary and sufficient condition for Segre varieties to have codimension one duals. On the other hand, a negative answer is given to a problem raised by S. Kleiman and R. Piene as follows: For a projective variety of dimension at least two, do the Gauss map and the natural projection from the conormal variety to the dual variety have the same inseparable degree?