Generalized measurements of atomic qubits

We discuss how generalized measurements may be performed on various atomic systems including cold ions and Rydberg atoms. The suggested methods rely on the fact that any generalized measurement can be identified with a unitary transformation followed by a projective measurement in a higher-dimensional Hilbert space. If the information to be measured is stored in the form of atomic qubits this unitary transformation can be accomplished by redistributing the population of the relevant atomic levels.