Systematic Errors in Current Quantum State Tomography Tools

Common tools for obtaining physical density matrices in experimental quantum state tomography are shown here to cause systematic errors. For example, using maximum likelihood or least squares optimization to obtain physical estimates for the quantum state, we observe a systematic underestimation of the fidelity and an overestimation of entanglement. Such strongly biased estimates can be avoided using linear evaluation of the data or by linearizing measurement operators yielding reliable and computational simple error bounds.