Decoherence-Free Control of Large Spin-Atomic Systems with Coherent Electromagnetic Fields*

Cold atomic systems provide a excellent testing ground for quantum control protocols due to their isolation from their environment and the availability of high precision fields from the ``quantum optics toolbox''. ~We consider controlling the 16-dimensional ground state hyperfine manifold of 133Cs through microwaves and rf-magnetic fields. ~These fields allow for essentially decoherence-free control of a system with non-trivial dynamics. ~We analyze the controllability of the system and numerically study the performance of a protocol for performing state preparation, mapping a fiducial state to an arbitrary target state.~