Maintaining the minimal distance of a point set in polylogarithmic time

A dynamic data structure is given that maintains the minimal distance in a set ofn points ink-dimensional space inO((logn) ^k log logn) amortized time per update. The size of the data structure is bounded byO(n(logn) ^k ). Distances are measured in the MinkowskiL _t -metric, where 1 t . This is the first dynamic data structure that maintains the minimal distance in polylogarithmic time for fully on-line updates.This work was supported by the ESPRIT II Basic Research Actions Program, under Contract No. 3075 (project ALCOM).