Effect of frustration on spin-wave excitation spectra and ground-state properties of the quasi-one-dimensional antiferromagnetic chain with asymmetrical sublattices

We investigate the effect of frustration on spin-wave excitation spectra and the properties of the quasi-one-dimensional Heisenberg chain using a spin-wave-wave analysis, the exact diagonalization method and the density matrix renormalization group method. The results show that frustration can cause the softening of the acoustic excitation spectrum ω3, as well as the hardening of the optical excitation spectrum ω1. As a function of the frustration parameter α, the phase diagram exhibits a ferromagnetic phase, a narrow canted phase and a singlet phase. The results obtained from numerical methods show that the spin gap obviously opens and the tetramer-dimer state dominates the properties of the ground state in the singlet phase.