In frustrated spin ladders composed of antiferromagnetically coupled chains, homogeneous or inhomogeneous, the interplay of frustration and correlations causes the emergence of two phases, Haldane (H) phase and rung singlet (RS) phase, in which the transition between these two phases had been under debate. In this paper we investigate the ground state phase diagram of frustrated mixed-spin-(1, 1/2) ladders, using the notions from quantum information theory such as entanglement entropy, Schmidt gap and entanglement levels degeneracies, and also defining various local and nonlocal order parameters. Employing two numerical techniques, the infinite time-evolving block decimation (iTEBD) and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithms, we obtain the ground state phase diagram of the ladder, and demonstrate that there is an intermediate phase between RS and H phases, where the ground state is disordered and the entanglement spectrum follow no particular pattern.
The phase diagram of an antiferromagnetic ladder with frustrating next-nearest-neighbor couplings along the legs is determined using numerical methods (exact diagonalization and density-matrix renormalization group) supplemented by strong-coupling and mean-field analysis. Interestingly, this model displays remarkable features, bridging the physics of the
J1-
J2 chain and of the unfrustrated ladder. The phase diagram as a function of the transverse coupling ${J}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}$ and the frustration
J2 exhibits an Ising transition between a columnar phase of dimers and the usual rung-singlet phase of two-leg ladders. The transition is driven by resonating valence bond fluctuations in the singlet sector while the triplet spin gap remains finite across the transition. In addition, frustration brings incommensurability in the real-space spin-correlation functions, the onset of which evolves smoothly from the
J1-
J2 chain value to zero in the large-${J}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}$ limit. The onset of incommensurability in the spin structure factor and in the dispersion relation is also analyzed. The physics of the frustrated rung-singlet phase is well understood using perturbative expansions and mean-field theories in the large-${J}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}$ limit. Last, we discuss the effect of the nontrivial magnon dispersion relation on the thermodynamical properties of the system. The relation of this model and its physics to experimental observations on compounds that are currently investigated, such as BiCu
2PO
6, is eventually addressed.