The a-cycle problem in XY model with ring frustration

Traditionally, the transverse spin-1 2 XY model is mapped to a fermionic “c-cycle” problem, where the prior periodic boundary condition is applied to the fermionic chain and the additional boundary term has been neglected. However, the “a-cycle” problem (the original problem without any approximation) has not been treated seriously up to now. In this paper, we consider the XY model with ring frustration and diagonalize it without any approximation with the help of parity constraint. Then two peculiar gapless phases have been found.