Ultraslow waves on the nanoscale

There has recently been a surge of interest in the physics and applications of broadband ultraslow waves in nanoscale structures operating below the diffraction limit. They range from light waves or surface plasmons in nanoplasmonic devices to sound waves in acoustic-metamaterial waveguides, as well as fermions and phonon polaritons in graphene and van der Waals crystals and heterostructures. We review the underlying physics of these structures, which upend traditional wave-slowing approaches ba