Slow light in photonic crystal waveguides

The physical principles behind the phenomenon of slow light in photonic crystal waveguides, as well as their practical limitations, are discussed and put into context. This includes the nature of slow light propagation, its bandwidth limitation, the scaling of linear and nonlinear interactions with the slowdown factor as well as issues such as losses, coupling into and the tuning of slow modes. Applications in all-optical signal processing appear to be the most promising outcome of the phenomena discussed.