MORE Thermal Gauge Theories at Finite and from Real-Time Quantum Simulation
Henry Lamm
Imaginary-time evolution can be reconstructed from real-time quantum simulations using exact integral transforms. We identify the construction of Guo, Shibu, Lin, and Zhao as a continuous linear combination of Hamiltonian simulations and show that its slow convergence arises from a redundant kernel component. We extend the construction from pure-state matrix elements to thermal traces and correlators. One real-time dataset then reconstructs targeted inverse temperatures, Euclidean separations, and chemical potentials through classical post-processing, bringing finite- physics within reach of real-time quantum simulation without thermal-state preparation. We benchmark the method on one- and two-flavor lattice Schwinger models, including circuit-level simulations with depolarizing noise.