The Local Cut Lemma

Abstract

The Lovász Local Lemma is a very powerful tool in probabilistic combinatorics, that is often used to prove existence of combinatorial objects satisfying certain constraints. Moser and Tardos (2010) have shown that the LLL gives more than just pure existence results: there is an effective randomized algorithm that can be used to find a desired object. In order to analyze this algorithm, Moser and Tardos developed the so-called entropy compression method. It turned out that one could obtain better combinatorial results by a direct application of the entropy compression method rather than simply appealing to the LLL. The aim of this paper is to provide a generalization of the LLL which implies these new combinatorial results. This generalization, which we call the Local Cut Lemma, concerns a random cut in a directed graph with certain properties. Note that our result has a short probabilistic proof that does not use entropy compression. As a consequence, it not only shows that a certain probability is positive, but also gives an explicit lower bound for this probability. As an illustration, we present a new application (an improved lower bound on the number of edges in color-critical hypergraphs) as well as explain how to use the Local Cut Lemma to derive some of the results obtained previously using the entropy compression method.