INVERSE QUANTUM-MECHANICAL CONTROL - A MEANS FOR DESIGN AND A TEST OFINTUITION

The inverse quantum-mechanical control of molecules is studied using t he equation of motion for the expectation value of an operator. With t his method, a requisite external field is obtained to track exactly a prescribed molecular objective expectation value as a function of time . Applications to diatomic and polyatomic molecules are formulated. Wh ile the method is directly applicable as a test of physical intuition, it can in principle be used to design fields for specific objectives including reactive selectivity. Results are presented for position and energy tracking in the hydrogen fluoride molecular system. The numeri cal calculations show that seemingly benign objective tracks may give rise to singularities in the field. However, these singularities do no t present problems in the evolution of the dynamical quantities and in stead provide useful hints for designing robust fields.