In this paper, we define four different notions of controllability of physical interest for multilevel quantum mechanical systems. These notions involve the possibility of driving the evolution operator as well as the state of the system. We establish the connections among these different notions as well as methods to verify controllability. The paper also contains results on the relation between the controllability in arbitrary small time of a system varying on a compact transformation Lie group and the corresponding system on the associated homogeneous space. As an application, we prove that, for the system of two interacting spin 1/2 particles, not every state transfer can be obtained in arbitrary small time.

Replaced by a new version which contains the proofs