Magnetic phase diagram of a frustrated ferrimagnetic ladder: Relation to the one-dimensional boson Hubbard model

Abstract

We study the magnetic phase diagram of two coupled mixed-spin $(1,{1/2})$ Heisenberg chains as a function of the frustration parameter related to diagonal exchange couplings. The analysis is performed by using spin-wave series and exact numerical diagonalization techniques. The obtained phase diagram--containing the Luttinger liquid phase, the plateau phase with a magnetization per rung $M=1/2$, and the fully polarized phase--is closely related to the generic $(J/U,\mu/U)$ phase diagram of the one-dimensional boson Hubbard model.