The frustrated spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg ladder with Heisenberg intra-rung and Ising inter-rung interactions is exactly solved in a longitudinal magnetic field by taking advantage of the local conservation of the total spin on each rung and the transfer-matrix method. We have rigorously calculated the ground-state phase diagram, magnetization process, magnetocaloric effect, and basic thermodynamic quantities for the model, which can be alternatively viewed as an Ising-Heisenberg tetrahedral chain. It is demonstrated that a stepwise magnetization curve with an intermediate plateau at half of the saturation magnetization is also reflected in respective stepwise changes of the concurrence serving as a measure of bipartite entanglement. The ground-state phase diagram and zero-temperature magnetization curves of the Ising-Heisenberg tetrahedral chain are contrasted with the analogous results of the purely quantum Heisenberg tetrahedral chain, which have been obtained through density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations. While both ground-state phase diagrams fully coincide in the regime of weak inter-rung interaction, the purely quantum Heisenberg tetrahedral chain develops Luttinger spin-liquid and Haldane phases for strongly coupled rungs, which are absent in the Ising-Heisenberg counterpart model.

• Received 18 September 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.89.022143