Qudit lattice states, as the generalization of qubit lattice states, are the maximally entangled states determined by qudit lattice unitaries in a ${p}^{r}\ensuremath{\bigotimes}{p}^{r}$ quantum system with
p being a prime and
r being an integer. Based on the partitions of qudit lattice unitaries into commuting sets, we present a sufficient condition for local discrimination of qudit lattice states, in which the commutativity plays an efficient role. It turns out that any set of
l qudit lattice states with $2\ensuremath{\le}l\ensuremath{\le}{p}^{r}$, including $k\ensuremath{\le}l$ mutually commuting qudit lattice unitaries and satisfying $l(l\ensuremath{-}1)\ensuremath{-}(k+1)(k\ensuremath{-}2)\ensuremath{\le}2{p}^{r}$, can be locally distinguished, not only extending Fan's result [H. Fan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 177905 (2004)] to the prime power quantum system but also involving the local discrimination of a larger number of maximally entangled states.
We study the distinguishability of generalized Bell states under local operations and classical communication. We introduce the concept of a maximally commutative set (MCS), a subset of generalized Pauli matrices whose elements are mutually commutative, and there is no other generalized Pauli matrix that commutes with all the elements of this set. We find that MCS can be considered a detector for the local distinguishability of a set
S of generalized Bell states. In fact, we get an efficient criterion. That is, if the difference set $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}\mathcal{S}$ of
S is disjoint with or completely contained in some MCS, then the set
S is locally distinguishable. Furthermore, we give a useful characterization of MCS for arbitrary dimensions, which provides great convenience for detecting the local discrimination of generalized Bell states. Our method can be generalized to more general settings which contain the lattice qudit basis. The results of Fan [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 177905 (2004)], Tian et al. [Phys. Rev. A 92, 042320 (2015)], and a recent work Yuan et al. [arXiv:2109.07390] can be deduced as special cases of our result.