Following the recent observation of wave function revivals in large Rydberg atom quantum simulators, much effort has focused on understanding the emergence of many-body scars in nonintegrable quantum systems. Here we explore the origin of scarred wave function revivals in a family of models obtained by deforming the graph adjacency matrix of the PXP model—the effective model of Rydberg atoms in the strong Rydberg blockade regime. We consider deformations that either enhance the Rydberg constraint, ultimately resulting in an effective tight-binding model of two hypercubes joined at a single vertex, or relax the constraint until reaching the free spin-1/2 model. In the former case, we argue that the model of two joined hypercubes captures the essential features of many-body scarring present in the PXP model. On the other hand, relaxing the constraint leads to a sequence of new scarred models, some with more robust scarring signatures than the PXP model, as can be understood from the graph-theoretic viewpoint. Our results shed light on the nature of scarring in the PXP model by identifying its simple parent model, while also highlighting its distinction from the free-spin precession.

• Received 29 November 2021
• Revised 12 May 2022
• Accepted 1 June 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.245137