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

Peng Guo* and Paul LeVan†

Frank X. Lee‡

Yong Zhao§

  • *Contact author: peng.guo@dsu.edu
  • †Contact author: paul.levan@dsu.edu
  • ‡Contact author: fxlee@gwu.edu
  • §Contact author: yong.zhao@anl.gov
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APS Open Sci. 1, 000094 – Published 13 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/hgxq-8c8h

Abstract

To overcome the fast oscillatory behavior of correlation functions for extracting scattering phase shift in real-time quantum simulations encountered in the work of Guo et al. [Phys. Rev. D 113, 054512 (2026)], we propose and test two solutions in the present work. One is to simulate Hermitian systems in imaginary time, and the other is to simulate non-Hermitian systems in real time. We demonstrate that both approaches lead to the problem of nonunitary quantum evolution that can be solved by combining two quantum algorithms: block encoding and Hadamard test. The combined quantum algorithm does not require midcircuit measurements or adjustment of the input parameters of the Hamiltonian and can be easily implemented on quantum computers. 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. In particular, the non-Hermitian approach shows a decisive advantage over the imaginary-time one on the number of required ancillary qubits, and hence is more practical to scale up.

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Outline

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APS Open Sci. 1, 000094– Published 13 August, 2026
Vol. 1
  • Received 2 April 2026
  • Accepted 6 August 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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