  Spatial and/or temporal propagation of light waves in periodic optical
structures offers a rather unique possibility to realize in a purely classical
setting the optical analogues of a wide variety of quantum phenomena rooted in
relativistic wave equations. In this work a brief overview of a few optical
analogues of relativistic quantum phenomena, based on either spatial light
transport in engineered photonic lattices or on temporal pulse propagation in
Bragg grating structures, is presented. Examples include spatial and temporal
photonic analogues of the Zitterbewegung of a relativistic electron, Klein
tunneling, vacuum decay and pair-production, the Dirac oscillator, the
relativistic Kronig-Penney model, and optical realizations of non-Hermitian
extensions of relativistic wave equations.
