Answer
multiplication
Step-by-step explanation:
I assume there are some plus signs that aren't rendering for some reason, so that the plane should be

.
You're minimizing

subject to the constraint

. Note that

and

attain their extrema at the same values of

, so we'll be working with the squared distance to avoid working out some slightly more complicated partial derivatives later.
The Lagrangian is

Take your partial derivatives and set them equal to 0:

Adding the first three equations together yields

and plugging this into the first three equations, you find a critical point at

.
The squared distance is then

, which means the shortest distance must be

.
The formula for multiplying exponents are such below.
(b^m)^n = b^mn
b^m/b^n=b^(m-n)
b^m x b^n=b^(m+n)