In a geometric bottleneck shortest path problem, we are given a set S of n points in the plane, and want to answer queries of the following type: given two points p and q of S and a real number L, compute (or approximate) a shortest path between p and q in the subgraph of the complete graph on S consisting of all edges whose lengths are less than or equal to L. We present efficient algorithms for answering several query problems of this type. Our solutions are based on Euclidean minimum spanning trees, spanners, and the Delaunay triangulation. A result of independent interest is the following. For any two points p and q of S, there is a path between p and q in the Delaunay triangulation, whose length is less than or equal to 2π/(3cos(π/6)) times the Euclidean distance |pq| between p and q, and all of whose edges have length at most |pq|.
A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the 20th Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2607, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2003, pp. 38–49.
