Electromagnetic and gravitational responses of photonic Landau levels

Topology has recently become a focus in condensed matter physics, arising in the context of the quantum Hall effect and topological insulators. In both of these cases, the topology of the system is defined through bulk properties (‘topological invariants’) but detected through surface properties. Here we measure three topological invariants of a quantum Hall material—photonic Landau levels in curved space—through local electromagnetic and gravitational responses of the bulk material. Viewing the material as a many-port circulator, the Chern number (a topological invariant) manifests as spatial winding of the phase of the circulator. The accumulation of particles near points of high spatial curvature and the moment of inertia of the resultant particle density distribution quantify two additional topological invariants—the mean orbital spin and the chiral central charge. We find that these invariants converge to their global values when probed over increasing length scales (several magnetic lengths), consistent with the intuition that the bulk and edges of a system are distinguishable only for sufficiently large samples (larger than roughly one magnetic length). Our experiments are enabled by applying quantum optics tools to synthetic topological matter (here twisted optical resonators). Combined with advances in Rydberg-mediated photon collisions, our work will enable precision characterization of topological matter in photon fluids.