We present a method based on augmenting an exact relation between a frequency-dependent diffusion constant and the imaginary time velocity autocorrelation function, combined with the maximum entropy numerical analytic continuation approach to study transport properties in quantum liquids. The method is applied to the case of liquid para-hydrogen at two thermodynamic state points: a liquid near the triple point and a high-temperature liquid. Good agreement for the self-diffusion constant and for the real-time velocity autocorrelation function is obtained in comparison to experimental measurements and other theoretical predictions. Improvement of the methodology and future applications are discussed.O ne of the major goals of, and perhaps the most challenging problem in, computational statistical mechanics is the simulation of quantum dynamics in condensed phases. In principle, the density matrix formalism provides all the tools necessary to study equilibrium and time-dependent properties of any chemical system. In practice, however, the exact solution of the time-dependent quantum Wigner-Liouville equation is possible for a very limited class of simple systems, and the numerical solution for a general many-body system is not possible because of the well known phase cancellation problem (the sign problem).This problem has led to a variety of different techniques to include the effects of quantum fluctuations on the dynamic response of the system. One of the viable alternatives to the exact quantum mechanical solution is the use of techniques that are ''semiclassical'' in nature; namely, the dynamic response is obtained with the aid of classical trajectories (1). Although such techniques appear promising, technical issues have prevented their use in describing dynamics in realistic quantum liquids.Another class of methods that has been used with success in a variety of problems involves sophisticated numerical analytical continuation of exact imaginary-time path-integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) data (2, 3). These methods have been applied to a variety of condensed phase problems, including the dynamics of an excess electron solvated in water (4), helium and xenon (5), vibrational relaxation (6, 7), optical spectroscopy (6-8), adiabatic reaction dynamics (9, 10), dynamics in various quantum lattice models (11,12), and density fluctuations in superfluid helium (13). However, the application of these approaches to study density fluctuations (13) and transport properties (4) in quantum liquids has not been completely successful.In this paper, we show that analytic continuation methods can be used successfully to study the transport properties of a ''realistic'' liquid. We express the imaginary time velocity autocorrelation function, which is obtained from a suitable PIMC method (14), in terms of a frequency-dependent diffusion constant and use the maximum entropy method to analytically continue the imaginary time data to real time and thus obtain the self-diffusion constant and the velocity autocorrelation function. We use ...