On the Locality of the Lovász Local Lemma

The Lovász Local Lemma is a versatile result in probability theory, characterizing circumstances in which a collection of n ‘bad events’, each occurring with probability at most p and dependent on a setof underlying random variables, can be avoided. It is a central tool of the probabilistic method, since it can be used to show that combinatorial objects satisfying some desirable properties must exist. While the original proof was existential, subsequent work has shown algorithms for the Lovász Local Lemma: that is, in circumstances in which the lemma proves the existence of some object, these algorithms can constructively find such an object. One main strand of these algorithms, which began with Moser and Tardos’s well-known result (JACM 2010), involves iteratively resampling the dependent variables of satisfied bad events until none remain satisfied.In this paper, we present a novel analysis that can be applied to resampling-style Lovász Local Lemma algorithms. This analysis shows that an output assignment for the dependent variables of most events can be determined only from O(log log 1/p n)-radius local neighborhoods, and that the events whose variables may still require resampling can be identified from these neighborhoods. This allows us to improve randomized complexities for the constructive Lovász Local Lemma (with polynomial criterion) in several parallel and distributed models. In particular, we obtain:• A LOCAL algorithm with O(log log_1/p n) node-averaged complexity (while matching the O(log_1/p n) worst-case complexity of Chung, Pettie, and Su).• An algorithm for the LCA and VOLUME models requiring dO(log log_1/p n) probes per query.• An O(log log log_1/p n)-round algorithm for CONGESTED CLIQUE, linear space MPC, and Heterogenous MPC.