Frustration-induced quantum phase transitions in a quasi-one-dimensional ferrimagnet: Hard-core boson map and the Tonks-Girardeau limit

We provide evidence of a superfluid-insulator transition (SIT) of magnons in a quasi-one-dimensional quantum ferrimagnet with isotropic competing antiferromagnetic spin interactions. This SIT occurs between two distinct ferrimagnetic phases due to the frustration-induced closing of the gap to a magnon excitation. It thus causes a coherent superposition of singlet and triplet states at lattice unit cells and power-law decay on the staggered spin-correlation function along the transverse direction to the spontaneous magnetization. A hard-core boson map suggests that asymptotically close to the SIT the magnons attain the Tonks-Girardeau limit. The quantized nature of the condensed singlets is observed before a first-order transition to a singlet magnetic spiral phase accompanied by critical antiferromagnetic ordering. In the limit of strong frustration, the system undergoes a decoupling transition to an isolated gapped two-leg ladder and a critical single linear chain.