Strong Coupling and Dark Modes in the Motion of a Pair of Levitated Nanoparticles

We experimentally investigate a system composed of two levitating nanospheres whose motions are indirectly coupled via coherent scattering in a single optical cavity mode. The nanospheres are loaded into a double longitudinal tweezer created with two lasers at different wavelengths, where chromatic aberration leads to the formation of two separate trapping sites. We achieve strong coupling between each pair of modes in the transverse plane of the tweezer, and we show the emergence of dark modes in the overall coupled motion. The observed features are ubiquitous in a variety of classical and quantum systems. As such, our experiment will allow us to explore the classical analog of typically quantum dynamics, and in further developments to investigate the transition to the quantum domain.