The Hermitian Distance degree of an algebraic variety

In this paper we develop an algebraic theory to study the problem of finding the minimum distance point from an algebraic variety with respect to the Hermitian distance function. The theory generalizes the Euclidean Distance degree introduced in arXiv:1309.0049, replacing a positive symmetric bilinear form by a Hermitian form. Various examples are presented to show the robustness of the machineries.