High index contrast semiconductor ARROW and hybrid ARROW fibers.

We investigate the guidance properties of two photonic crystal fibers that have been fabricated by filling the holes of a silica template with hydrogenated amorphous silicon inclusions. The first is an all-solid fiber that guides light via an antiresonant reflecting optical waveguiding mechanism and the second is only partially filled so that it guides light by a hybrid of modified total internal reflection and antiresonant reflecting optical waveguiding. It will be shown that, by selectively filling the silica template to leave an unfilled internal ring of holes, the fiber's confinement loss can be reduced significantly. This novel fiber design in which the light guided in the silica core can be modified by the semiconductor cladding provides a route to integrating functional semiconductor fibers with existing silica fiber infrastructures.