Exact solution for a quantum compass ladder

We present a spin ladder with antiferromagnetic Ising $ZZ$ interactions along the legs and interactions on the rungs which interpolate between the Ising ladder and the quantum compass ladder. We show that the entire energy spectrum of the ladder may be determined exactly for finite number of spins $2N$ by mapping to the quantum Ising chain and using Jordan-Wigner transformation in invariant subspaces. We also demonstrate that subspaces with spin defects lead to excited states using finite-size scaling, and the ground state corresponds to the quantum Ising model without defects. At the quantum phase transition to maximally frustrated interactions of the compass ladder, the $ZZ$ spin-correlation function on the rungs collapses to zero and the ground-state degeneracy increases by two. We formulate a systematic method to calculate the partition function for a mesoscopic system and employ it to demonstrate that fragmentation of the compass ladder by kink defects increases with increasing temperature. The obtained heat capacity of a large compass ladder consisting of $2N=104$ spins reveals two relevant energy scales and has a broad maximum due to dense energy spectrum. The present exact results elucidate the nature of the quantum phase transition from ordered to disordered ground state found in the compass model in two dimensions.