Multistate Switching of Photonic Angular Momentum Coupling in Phase-Change Metadevices

The coupling between photonic spin and orbital angular momenta is significantly enhanced at the subwavelength scale and has found a plethora of applications in nanophotonics. However, it is still a great challenge to make such kind of coupling tunable with multiple sates. Here, a versatile metasurface platform based on polyatomic phase-change resonators is provided to realize multiple-state switching of photonic angular momentum coupling. As a proof of concept, three coupling modes, namely, symmetric coupling, asymmetric coupling, and no coupling, are experimentally demonstrated at three different crystallization levels of structured Ge₂ Sb₂ Te₅ alloy. In practical applications, coded information can be encrypted in asymmetric mode using the spin degree of freedom, while revealing misleading one without proper phase change or after excessive crystallinity. With these findings, this study may open an exciting direction for subwavelength electromagnetics with unprecedented compactness, allowing to envision applications in active nanophotonics and information security engineering.