Extension of the Morris-Shore transformation to multilevel ladders

We describe situations in which chains of N degenerate quantum energy levels, coupled by time-dependent external fields, can be replaced by independent sets of chains of length N, N-1,...,2 and sets of uncoupled single states. The transformation is a generalization of the two-level Morris-Shore transformation [J.R. Morris and B.W. Shore, Phys. Rev. A 27, 906 (1983)]. We illustrate the procedure with examples of three-level chains.