Strong coupling and dark modes in the motion of a pair of levitated nanoparticles

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates strong coupling and dark modes in the motion of two levitated nanoparticles via optical cavity interactions, revealing classical analogs of quantum phenomena and enabling future quantum explorations.

Contribution

It experimentally shows strong coupling and dark modes in levitated nanoparticles, providing a platform to study classical-quantum analogs and transition to quantum regimes.

Findings

Observation of avoided crossings indicating strong coupling

Emergence of dark modes in coupled nanoparticle motion

Potential for exploring quantum dynamics and entanglement

Abstract

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, as demonstrated by the avoided crossings observed when tuning the eigenfrequencies of the motion of one nanosphere by varying its optical potential depth. Remarkably, we show the emergence of dark modes in the overall coupled motion. The dynamics can be described in terms of spin-1/2 matrices, and 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 by lowering the decoherence rate and creating stationary entanglement, as well as implementing non-stationary protocols.