  Sign problems in path integrals arise when different field configurations
contribute with different signs or phases. Phase unwrapping describes a family
of signal processing techniques in which phase differences between elements of
a time series are integrated to construct non-compact unwrapped phase
differences. By combining phase unwrapping with a cumulant expansion, path
integrals with sign problems arising from phase fluctuations can be
systematically approximated as linear combinations of path integrals without
sign problems. This work explores phase unwrapping in zero-plus-one-dimensional
complex scalar field theory. Results with improved signal-to-noise ratios for
the spectrum of scalar field theory can be obtained from unwrapped phases, but
the size of cumulant expansion truncation errors is found to be undesirably
sensitive to the parameters of the phase unwrapping algorithm employed. It is
argued that this numerical sensitivity arises from discretization artifacts
that become large when phases fluctuate close to singularities of a complex
logarithm in the definition of the unwrapped phase.
