  The dynamical behavior of a coupled cavity array is investigated when each
cavity contains a three-level atom. For the uniform and staggered intercavity
hopping, the whole system Hamiltonian can be analytically diagonalized in the
subspace of single-atom excitation. The quantum state transfer along the
cavities is analyzed in detail for distinct regimes of parameters, and some
interesting phenomena including binary transmission, selective localization of
the excitation population are revealed. We demonstrate that the uniform
coupling is more suitable for the quantum state transfer. It is shown that the
initial state of polariton located in the first cavity is crucial to the
transmission fidelity, and the local entanglement depresses the state transfer
probability. Exploiting the metastable state, the distance of the quantum state
transfer can be much longer than that of Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model. A
higher transmission probability and longer distance can be achieved by
employing a class of initial encodings and final decodings.
