We study the topological properties of Bose-Mott insulators in one-dimensional non-Hermitian superlattices, which may serve as effective Hamiltonians for cold atomic optical systems with either two-body loss or one-body loss. We find that in the strongly repulsive limit, the Mott insulator states of the Bose-Hubbard model with a finite two-body loss under integer fillings are topological insulators characterized by a finite charge gap, nonzero integer Chern numbers, and nontrivial edge modes in a low-energy excitation spectrum under an open boundary condition. The two-body loss suppressed by the strong repulsion results in a stable topological Bose-Mott insulator which has features similar to the Hermitian case. However, for the non-Hermitian model related to the one-body loss, we find the non-Hermitian topological Mott insulators are unstable with a finite imaginary excitation gap. Finally, we also discuss the stability of the Mott phase in the presence of two-body loss by solving the Lindblad master equation.

• Received 4 February 2020
• Accepted 10 July 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.102.035153