  We investigate the conditions yielding plasmon-exciton strong coupling at the
single emitter level in the gap between two metal nanoparticles. A
quasi-analytical transformation optics approach is developed that makes
possible a thorough exploration of this hybrid system incorporating the full
richness of its plasmonic spectrum. This allows us to reveal that by placing
the emitter away from the cavity center, its coupling to multipolar dark modes
of both even and odd parity increases remarkably. This way, reversible dynamics
in the population of the quantum emitter takes place in feasible
implementations of this archetypal nanocavity.
