Optical information processing of the future is associated with a new generation of compact nanoscale optical devices operating entirely with light. Moreover, adaptive features such as self-guiding, reconfiguration and switching become more and more important. Nonlinear devices offer an enormous potential for these applications. Consequently, innovative concepts for all-optical communication and information technologies based on nonlinear effects in photonic-crystal physics and nanoscale devices as metamaterials are of high interest.
This book focuses on nonlinear optical phenomena in periodic media, such as photonic crystals, optically-induced, adaptive lattices, atomic lattices or metamaterials. The main purpose is to describe and overview new physical phenomena that result from the interplay between nonlinearities and structural periodicities and is a guide to actual and future developments for the expert reader in optical information processing, as well as in the physics of cold atoms in optical lattices.

Nonlinear Effects in Reduced-Dimensional Structures: From Wave Guide Arrays to Slow Light.- Nonlinear Effects in One-Dimensional Photonic Lattices.- Nonlinear Optical Waves in Liquid Crystalline Lattices.- Nonlinear Optics and Solitons in Photonic Crystal Fibres.- Spatial Switching of Slow Light in Periodic Photonic Structures.- Nonlinear Effects in Multidimensional Lattices: Solitons and Light Localization.- to Solitons in Photonic Lattices.- Complex Nonlinear Photonic Lattices: From Instabilities to Control.- Light Localization by Defects in Optically Induced Photonic Structures.- Polychromatic Light Localisation in Periodic Structures.- Periodic Structures for Matter Waves: From Lattices to Ratchets.- Bose-Einstein Condensates in 1D Optical Lattices: Nonlinearity and Wannier-Stark Spectra.- Transporting Cold Atoms in Optical Lattices with Ratchets: Mechanisms and Symmetries.- Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates in Optical Lattices with Variable Spatial Symmetry.- Symmetry and Transport in a Rocking Ratchet for Cold Atoms.- Metamaterials: From Linear to Nonlinear Features.- Optical Metamaterials: Invisibility in Visible and Nonlinearities in Reverse.- Nonlinear Metamaterials.- Circuit Model of Gain in Metamaterials.- Discrete Breathers and Solitons in Metamaterials.