A generic model of measurement device which is able to directly measure
commonly used quantum-state characteristics such as fidelity, overlap, purity
and Hilbert-Schmidt distance for two general uncorrelated mixed states is
proposed. In addition, for two correlated mixed states, the measurement
realizes an entanglement witness for Werner's separability criterion. To
determine these observables, the estimation only one parameter - the visibility
of interference, is needed. The implementations in cavity QED, trapped ion and
electromagnetically induced transparency experiments are discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure