Path Minima Queries in Dynamic Weighted Trees

In the path minima problem on trees each tree edge is assigned a weight and a query asks for the edge with minimum weight on a path between two nodes. For the dynamic version of the problem on a tree, where the edge-weights can be updated, we give comparison-based and RAM data structures that achieve optimal query time. These structures support inserting a node on an edge, inserting a leaf, and contracting edges. When only insertion and deletion of leaves in a tree are needed, we give two data structures that achieve optimal and significantly lower query times than when updating the edge-weights is allowed. One is a semigroup structure for which the edge-weights are from an arbitrary semigroup and queries ask for the semigroup-sum of the edge-weights on a given path. For the other structure the edge-weights are given in the word RAM. We complement these upper bounds with lower bounds for different variants of the problem.