Quantum computers are next-generation devices that hold promise to perform calculations beyond the reach of classical computers. A leading method towards achieving this goal is through quantum machine learning, especially quantum generative learning. Due to the intrinsic probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, it is reasonable to postulate that quantum generative learning models (QGLMs) may surpass their classical counterparts. As such, QGLMs are receiving growing attention from the quantum physics and computer science communities, where various QGLMs that can be efficiently implemented on near-term quantum machines with potential computational advantages are proposed. In this paper, we review the current progress of QGLMs from the perspective of machine learning. Particularly, we interpret these QGLMs, covering quantum circuit Born machines, quantum generative adversarial networks, quantum Boltzmann machines, and quantum variational autoencoders, as the quantum extension of classical generative learning models. In this context, we explore their intrinsic relations and their fundamental differences. We further summarize the potential applications of QGLMs in both conventional machine learning tasks and quantum physics. Last, we discuss the challenges and further research directions for QGLMs.

Efficient quantum compiling is essential for complex quantum algorithms realization. The Solovay–Kitaev (S–K) theorem offers a theoretical lower bound on the required operations for approaching any unitary operator. However, it is still an open question that this lower bound can be actually reached in practice. Here, we present an efficient quantum compiler which, for the first time, approaches the S–K lower bound in practical implementations, both for single-qubit and two-qubit scenarios, marking a significant milestone. Our compiler leverages deep reinforcement learning (RL) techniques to address current limitations in terms of optimality and inference time. Furthermore, we show that our compiler is versatile by demonstrating comparable performance between inverse-free basis sets, which is always the case in real quantum devices, and inverse-closed sets. Our findings also emphasize the often-neglected constant term in scaling laws, bridging the gap between theory and practice in quantum compiling. These results highlight the potential of RL-based quantum compilers, offering efficiency and practicality while contributing novel insights to quantum compiling theory.

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have shown strong evidence to gain provable computational advantages in diverse fields such as finance, machine learning, and chemistry. However, the heuristic ansatz exploited in modern VQAs is incapable of balancing the trade-off between expressivity and trainability, which may lead to degraded performance when executed on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) machines. To address this issue, here, we demonstrate the first proof-of-principle experiment of applying an efficient automatic ansatz design technique, i.e., quantum architecture search (QAS), to enhance VQAs on an 8-qubit superconducting quantum processor. In particular, we apply QAS to tailor the hardware-efficient ansatz toward classification tasks. Compared with heuristic ansätze, the ansatz designed by QAS improves the test accuracy from $31\%$ to $98\%$. We further explain this superior performance by visualizing the loss landscape and analyzing effective parameters of all ansätze. Our work provides concrete guidance for developing variable ansätze to tackle various large-scale quantum learning problems with advantages.

Entanglement plays a pivotal role in numerous quantum applications, and as technology progresses, entanglement systems continue to expand. However, quantifying entanglement is a complex problem, particularly for multipartite quantum states. The currently available entanglement measures suffer from high computational complexity, and for unknown multipartite entangled states, complete information about the quantum state is often necessary, further complicating calculations. In this paper, we train neural networks to quantify unknown multipartite entanglement using input features based on squared entanglement (SE) and outcome statistics data produced by locally measuring target quantum states. By leveraging machine learning techniques to handle non-linear relations between outcome statistics and entanglement measurement SE, we achieve high-precision quantification of unknown multipartite entanglement states with a linear number of measurements, avoiding the need for global measurements and quantum state tomography. The proposed method exhibits robustness against noise and extends its applicability to pure and mixed states, effectively scaling to large-scale multipartite entanglement systems. The results of the experiment show that the predicted entanglement measures are very close to the actual values, which confirms the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Quantum computers can offer dramatic improvements over classical devices for data analysis tasks such as prediction and classification. However, less is known about the advantages that quantum computers may bring in the setting of reinforcement learning, where learning is achieved via interaction with a task environment. Here, we consider a special case of reinforcement learning, where the task environment allows quantum access. In addition, we impose certain "naturalness" conditions on the task environment, which rule out the kinds of oracle problems that are studied in quantum query complexity (and for which quantum speedups are well-known). Within this framework of quantum-accessible reinforcement learning environments, we demonstrate that quantum agents can achieve exponential improvements in learning efficiency, surpassing previous results that showed only quadratic improvements. A key step in the proof is to construct task environments that encode well-known oracle problems, such as Simon's problem and Recursive Fourier Sampling, while satisfying the above "naturalness" conditions for reinforcement learning. Our results suggest that quantum agents may perform well in certain game-playing scenarios, where the game has recursive structure, and the agent can learn by playing against itself.