Defect of Euclidean distance degree (Q2221769)

The \textit{(unit) Euclidean distance degree} of an algebraic variety \(X\) is the generic number of non-singular critical points of the complexified squared distance function. It can serve as measure for the algebraic complexity of computing closest points -- an important task is several applications. The \textit{generic Euclidean distance degree} is defined in the same way but ``distance'' refers to a metric that is affinely distorted (``weighted'') in a generic way. It is known that the unit Euclidean distance degree depends on topological properties of the intersection of \(X\) with the isotropic quadric \(Q\) and this result straightforwardly extends to the generic Euclidean distance degree. This paper studies the \textit{Euclidean distance degree defect,} that is, the difference between generic and unit Euclidean distance degrees. This defect admits a topological interpretation in terms of invariants of singularities of \(X \cap Q\) and may be easier to compute than the distance degrees themselves. The precise formula requires a Whitney stratification of \(X \cap Q\). It involves the generic distance degrees of the closure of its strata as well as Euler characteristics of the reduced cohomologies of Milnor fibers of \(X \cap Q\) as hypersurface in \(X\) and the complex links of pairs of distinct strata \((V,S)\) with \(\overline{V} \subset S\). The proof of the central result is framed by a section on preliminaries where above concepts are explained to non-expert readers and a section with examples that illustrate applications of the derived formulas.