Reconstruction of diagonal elements of density matrix using maximum likelihood estimation

Abstract

The data of the experiment of Schiller et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 77 (1996) 2933, are alternatively evaluated using the maximum likelihood estimation. The given data are fitted better than by the standard deterministic approach. Nevertheless, the data are fitted equally well by a whole family of states. Standard deterministic predictions correspond approximately to the envelope of these maximum likelihood solutions.