The simulation of ion-atom collisions remains a formidable challenge due to the complex interplay between electronic and nuclear degrees of freedom. We present a hybrid quantum-classical computing framework for simulating time-dependent ion-atom collision dynamics, within which two variational quantum time evolution algorithms are implemented. To validate our framework, we simulate the charge-transfer dynamics and compute the corresponding cross sections for the proton-hydrogen collision system across an energy range 1–25 keV. Our results accurately reproduce the charge-transfer dynamics with high fidelity and exhibit very good agreement with available experimental and theoretical cross-section data across the entire energy range. These results highlight the accuracy and applicability of our hybrid quantum-classical framework for scattering cross-section calculations. Our work demonstrates an effective approach for mapping time-dependent many-body collision problems onto near-term quantum computing devices, and also provides promising directions for practical applications of universal quantum computing in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era.

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• Charge-transfer collisions
• Quantum simulation