Tapered nanoscale chalcogenide fibers directly drawn from bulk glasses as optical couplers for high-index resonators.

We report production of air-clad tapered chalcogenide fibers by directly drawing bulk glasses between cleaved tips of tapered silica fibers. Exploiting these tapered fibers with nanoscale waists as evanescent optical couplers, we demonstrate phase-matched coupling of light into on-chip whispering gallery mode chalcogenide microresonators with coupling efficiencies as high as 95%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first-time demonstration of critical coupling into high-index microresonators by using high-index tapered fibers. The tapered chalcogenide fibers can also be utilized as optical couplers for microresonators made of various high-index materials, as well as for nonlinear optical applications. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America