Quantum disorder and local modes of the fully-frustrated transverse field Ising model on a diamond chain

We investigate the transverse field Ising model on a diamond chain using series expansions about the high-field limit and exact diagonalizations. For the unfrustrated case we accurately determine the quantum critical point and its expected 2d Ising universality separating the polarized and the Z(2) symmetry broken phase. In contrast, we find strong evidence for a disorder by disorder scenario for the fully-frustrated transverse field Ising model, i.e., except for the pure Ising model, having an extensive number of ground states, the system is always in a quantum disordered polarized phase. The low-energy excitations in this polarized phase are understood in terms of exact local modes of the model. Furthermore, an effective low-energy description for an infinitesimal transverse field allows us to pinpoint the quantum disordered nature of the ground state via mapping to an effective transverse field Ising chain and to determine the induced gap to the elementary effective domain wall excitation very accurately.