Excitation spectrum and ground state properties of the S=1/2 Heisenberg ladder with staggered dimerization

We have studied the excitation spectrum of the $S=1/2$ quantum spin ladder with staggered dimerization by dimer series expansions, diagrammatic analysis of an effective interacting Bose gas of local triplets, and exact diagonalization of small clusters. We find that the model has two massive phases, with predominant inter-chain (rung) or intra-chain correlations. The transition from the rung dimer into the intra-chain dimer phase is characterized by softening of the triplet spectrum at $k=\pi$. The excitation spectrum as well as the spin correlations away from and close to the critical line are calculated. The location of the phase boundary is also determined.