Antiferromagnetic Spin Ladders with Odd and Even number of Chains

We construct frustrated antiferromagnetic spin ladders with m chains for which the exact ground state can be determined in a particular parameter regime. The excitation spectrum is shown rigorously to be gapless ( with gap ) for odd ( even ) m. In a general parameter regime, the four-chain and periodic ladders are studied using a mean-field theory based on the bond operator formalism for spin $S=1/2$. The excitation spectrum and the spin-gap are calculated in both the cases. The spin-gap of the frustrated ladder system has a larger magnitude than in the case of non-frustrated ladders. For the frustrated periodic ladder, the spin-gap vanishes at a critical value of the interladder coupling strength which is larger than the critical value in the case of non-frustrated periodic ladder.