Major Accomplishments in 2009 on Slow Light

We present a brief overview of recent advances in the field of “slow light,” the field that studies means for controllably reducing the group velocity of light to values much smaller than its vacuum velocity, $c$. Some of the results summarized here include electrooptic modulation of single photons, all-optical switching within an atomic-vapor-filled hollow fiber, large induced phase shifts for microwave photonics, slow-light-enhanced nonlinear optical interactions, and highly controllable time delays in semiconductor optical amplifiers, parametric delay-dispersion tuners, and arrays of active microresonators