Unraveling PXP Many-Body Scars through Floquet Dynamics

Abstract

Quantum scars are special eigenstates of many-body systems that evade thermalization. They were first discovered in the PXP model, a well-known effective description of Rydberg atom arrays. Despite significant theoretical efforts, the fundamental origin of PXP scars remains elusive. By investigating the discretized dynamics of the PXP model as a function of the Trotter step 𝜏, we uncover a remarkable correspondence between the zero- and two-particle eigenstates of the integrable Floquet-PXP cellular automaton at 𝜏=𝜋/2 and the PXP many-body scars of the time-continuous limit. Specifically, we demonstrate that PXP scars are adiabatically connected to the eigenstates of the 𝜏=𝜋/2 Floquet operator. Building on this result, we propose a protocol for achieving high-fidelity preparation of PXP scars in Rydberg atom experiments.