EditorialResults in crystal optics obtained during the past fifty years provide a solid foundation for the progress of modern photonics. Concepts developed in the physics of crystalline solids can potentially be applied to the physics of photonic super crystals. While the theory of impurity bands and excitons in semiconductor crystals has been constructed in [1970][1971][1972][1973][1974][1975][1976][1977][1978][1979][1980], an analogous theory for photonic crystals is yet to be completed. Recent experiments and theoretical investigations reveal an intense interest for polartonic structures and systems of coupled micro resonators [1], whose applications include fabrication of clockworks of unprecedented accuracy [2,3] as well as the sources of coherent irradiation. There has been a significant advance in the photonics of imperfect structures. A number of our recent works have been devoted to optical activity of imperfect photonic crystals [4] and to dispersion of exciton-like electromagnetic excitations in non-ideal lattices of coupled micro resonators [5,6].Designing and utilization of novel materials for manufacturing of the sources of coherent irradiation is currently a vast interdisciplinary area, which spans various theoretical and fundamental aspects of laser physics, condensed matter physics, nanotechnology, chemistry as well information science [7,8]. Physical realization of corresponding devices requires the ability to manipulate the group velocity of propagation of electromagnetic pulses, which is accomplished by the use of the so-called polaritonic crystals. The latter represent a particular type of photonic crystals featured by a strong coupling between quantum excitations in a medium (excitons) and optical fields.An example of polaritonic structure can be given by a spatially periodic system of coupled microcavities [9]. An interest for optical modes in microcavity arrays has been growing lately due to the enhancement of optoelectronic devices [10,11]. In this connection the defect-based resonators in photonic crystals deserve special attention. In [12] it was shown that such resonators can form a strong coupling with quantum dots. Alodjants [1] gave a theoretical analysis of the formation of quantum solitons coupled to lower dispersion branch (LDB) polaritons in a chain of microcavities. The authors suggest that such systems can be particularly appealing for the purposes of quantum information processing. Microcavity systems can also be employed for the construction of highly accurate optical clockworks [2,3].It is worth stressing that the conventional polaritonic model [1,5] of the atomic-optical interaction is only applicable to the case of ultracold atoms with frozen-out degrees of freedom. The corresponding approximation is valid when the number of atoms contained in individual cavities is relatively small (N ≤ 10 4 ) [13]. Parameter g of the strong atomic-optical interaction must satisfy the condition g>>2π/τ coh i.e. in each cavity g should much exceed the inverse coherence time τ coh of the ...