Low-lying magnon excitations in integer-spin ladders and tubes Original Research Article

We consider low-energy excitation structures of N-leg integer-spin ladder and tube systems with an antiferromagnetic (AF) intrachain coupling and a uniform external field. The tube means the ladder with the periodic boundary condition along the interchain (rung) direction. Odd-leg AF-rung tubes have the frustration. In order to analyze all systems including frustrated tubes, we apply a field theoretical method based on the non-linear sigma model. We mainly focus on the systems without any external fields. In this case, it is shown that the lowest bands of frustrated tubes always consist of six-fold degenerate magnon excitations, while those of all other systems are triply degenerate. This result implies that the ground states of frustrated tubes (all non-frustrated systems) become a two (one)-component Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid, when a sufficiently strong uniform field is applied.