Commutativity in the Algorithmic Lovasz Local Lemma

Abstract: We consider the recent formulation of the Algorithmic Lov\'asz Local Lemma [10,2,3] for finding objects that avoid bad features', orflaws'. It extends the Moser-Tardos resampling algorithm [17] to more general discrete spaces. At each step the method picks a flaw present in the current state and goes to a new state according to some prespecified probability distribution (which depends on the current state and the selected flaw). However, it is less flexible than the Moser-Tardos method since [10,2,3] require a specific flaw selection rule, whereas [17] allows an arbitrary rule (and thus can potentially be implemented more efficiently). We formulate a new "commutativity" condition, and prove that it is sufficient for an arbitrary rule to work. It also enables an efficient parallelization under an additional assumption. We then show that existing resampling oracles for perfect matchings and permutations do satisfy this condition.