Set-theoretic defining equations of the tangential variety of the Segre variety

Abstract

We prove a set-theoretic version of the Landsberg--Weyman Conjecture on the defining equations of the tangential variety of a Segre product of projective spaces. We introduce and study the concept of exclusive rank. For the proof of this conjecture we use a connection to the author's previous work \cite{oeding_pm_paper, oeding_thesis} and re-express the tangential variety as the variety of principal minors of symmetric matrices that have exclusive rank no more than one.