The echo effect has been known for many years in such diverse branches of physics as nuclear magnetic resonance, optics, plasmas, and fluids. It has been pointed out that the echo phenomenon should also be observable in hadron accelerators. If a beam is injected off‐center, and the betatron oscillations of its centroid are permitted to damp out by nonlinearity‐induced decoherence, a subsequent quad kick should, after a delay, transiently restore those betatron oscillations in the form of an echo signal. This article presents beam phase‐space portraits of the evolution of the echo, as well as detailed analytical calculations that permit estimation of the maximum echo amplitude attainable for a given initial beam offset. One of the analytic results is a numerically useful summation formula that also reveals a regular multiple‐echo train subsequent to the first echo signal. © 1995American Institute of Physics