  The interaction of a quantum system with a bath, usually referred to as
dissipation, can be controlled if one can establish quantum interference
between the system--bath interaction and a coupling of the system to an
external control field. This is demonstrated for the example of the spin-boson
model in the strong coupling limit for the system--bath interaction. It is
shown that driving and trapping of the spin system leads to an optimum control
problem which is nonlinear in the external control field. Using an indirect
optimization strategy introducing a Lagrange-type adjoint state, we show that
the spin system can be trapped in otherwise unstable quantum states and that it
can be driven from a given initial state to a specified target state with high
fidelity.
