Quantum technologies offer the prospect to efficiently simulate sign-problem afflicted regimes in lattice field theory, such as the presence of topological terms, chemical potentials, and out-of-equilibrium dynamics. In this work, we derive the 3+1D topological $theta$-term for Abelian and non-Abelian lattice gauge theories in the Hamiltonian formulation, paving the way towards Hamiltonian-based simulations of such terms on quantum and classical computers. We further study numerically the zero-temperature phase structure of a 3+1D U(1) lattice gauge theory with the $theta$-term via exact diagonalization for a single periodic cube. In the strong coupling regime, our results suggest the occurrence of a phase transition at constant values of $theta$, as indicated by an avoided level-crossing and abrupt changes in the plaquette expectation value, the electric energy density, and the topological charge density. These results could in principle be cross-checked by the recently developed 3+1D tensor network methods and quantum simulations, once sufficient resources become available.
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