Heavy photon states in photonic chains of resonantly coupled cavities with supermonodispersive microspheres

We propose and demonstrate a "bottom-up" approach to constructing photonic structures for photon manipulation. Supermonodispersive polymer microspheres are used as building blocks and a size uniformity better than 0.05% could be obtained by sorting the spheres using spectroscopic methods. The spheres are positioned in a V groove on a silicon substrate and form a photonic chain with resonant coupling of the optical whispering-gallery modes. Photonic band modes are clearly observed in fluorescence and resonant scattering spectra, and an excellent agreement with a tight-binding model calculation is found. Heavy photon states and a group index as high as 40 are obtained.