Absolutely continuous energy bands in the electronic spectrum of quasiperiodic ladder networks

The energy spectra of quasi-one-dimensional quasiperiodic ladder networks are analyzed within a tight binding description. In particular, we show that if a selected set of sites in each strand of a ladder is tunnel-coupled to quantum dots attached from a side, absolutely continuous subbands can be generated in the spectrum if one tunes the dot potential and the dot-strand coupling appropriately. Typical cases with two and three strand Fibonacci ladders in the off-diagonal model are discussed in details. We also discuss the possibility of re-entrant insulator-metal transition for a general n-strand ladder network when n becomes large. The observations remain valid even in the case of a disordered ladder network with the same constituents. The results are analytically exact.