For anyone looking to understand photonic crystals, this systematic, rigorous, and pedagogical introduction is a must. Here you ll find intuitive analytical and semi-analytical models applied to complex and practically relevant photonic crystal structures. You will also be shown how to use various analytical methods borrowed from quantum mechanics, such as perturbation theory, asymptotic analysis, and group theory, to investigate many of the limiting properties of photonic crystals which are otherwise difficult to rationalize using only numerical simulations. An introductory review of...