  We study the coherent flow of interacting Bose-condensed atoms in mesoscopic
waveguide geometries. Analytical and numerical methods, based on the mean-field
description of the condensate, are developed to study both stationary as well
as time-dependent propagation processes. We apply these methods to the
propagation of a condensate through an atomic quantum dot in a waveguide,
discuss the nonlinear transmission spectrum and show that resonant transport is
generally suppressed due to an interaction-induced bistability phenomenon.
Finally, we establish a link between the nonlinear features of the transmission
spectrum and the self-consistent quasi-bound states of the quantum dot.
