Scattering phase shift in quantum mechanics on quantum computers: non-Hermitian systems and imaginary-time simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces two quantum simulation methods—imaginary-time for Hermitian systems and real-time for non-Hermitian systems—to extract scattering phase shifts, addressing oscillatory challenges in real-time quantum simulations.

Contribution

It proposes and tests combined quantum algorithms using block encoding and Hadamard test to efficiently simulate non-Hermitian and imaginary-time systems on quantum computers.

Findings

Both approaches match exact solutions for long enough simulation times.

Quantum circuits grow linearly with evolution time, enabling scalable simulations.

Methods effectively circumvent oscillations in real-time quantum simulations.

Abstract

To overcome the fast oscillatory behavior of correlation functions for extracting scattering phase shift in real-time quantum simulations encountered in Ref.\cite{Guo:2026qkx}, we propose and test two solutions in the present work. One is to simulate Hermitian systems in imaginary time, the other is to simulate non-Hermitian systems in real time. We demonstrate that both approaches lead to the problem of non-unitary quantum evolution which can be solved by combining two quantum algorithms: block encoding and Hadamard test. The combined quantum algorithm does not require mid-circuit measurements or adjustment of the input parameters of the Hamiltonian, and can be easily implemented on quantum computers. Both the size and length of quantum circuits grow linearly with evolution time. Numerical tests on quantum simulators show that both approaches agree with exact solutions for a sufficiently long time before the signal is lost in statistical fluctuations. The results bode well for using non-Hermitian and imaginary-time simulations to circumvent oscillations inherent in real-time simulation of other quantum systems.