Constructing quantum many-body scar Hamiltonians from Floquet automata

Abstract: We provide a systematic approach for constructing approximate quantum many-body scars (QMBS) starting from two-layer Floquet automaton circuits that exhibit trivial many-body revivals. We do so by applying successively more restrictions that force local gates of the automaton circuit to commute concomitantly more accurately when acting on select scar states. With these rules in place, an effective local, Floquet Hamiltonian is seen to capture dynamics of the automaton over a long prethermal window. We provide numerical evidence for such a picture and use our construction to derive several QMBS models, including the celebrated PXP model.