A general theory of empirical state determination in quantum physics: Part I

This paper develops a method for extracting from data the quantum theoretical state representation belonging to any reproducible empirical scheme for preparing a physical system, provided only that at least one observable has its possible values limited to a finite set. In Part I, we formulate a general systematic procedure, based on the concept of irreducible tensor operators, for the selection of sets of observables sufficiently large to permit the unambiguous determination of an unknown quantum state.This investigation was supported in part under a grant from Research Corporation and by Graduate School research funds.