Abstract
We have embedded thin tapered fibers (with diameters down to ) in silica aerogel with low loss. The aerogel is rigid but behaves refractively like air, protecting the taper without disturbing light propagation along it. This enables a new class of fiber devices exploiting volume evanescent interactions with the aerogel itself or with dopants or gases in the pores.
© 2009 Optical Society of America
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