General method for complete population transfer in degenerate systems

A simple theoretical solution to the design of a control field that generates complete population transfer from an initial state, via N nondegenerate intermediate states, to one arbitrary member of M (M⩽N) degenerate states is constructed. The full control field exploits an (M+N−1)-node null adiabatic state, created by designing the relative phases and amplitudes of the component fields that together make up the full field. The solution found is universal in the sense that it does not depend on the exact number of the unwanted degenerate states or their properties. The results obtained suggest that a class of multilevel quantum systems with degenerate states can be completely controllable, even under extremely strong constraints, e.g., never populating a Hilbert subspace that is only a few dimensions smaller than the whole Hilbert space.