Ground state energy and mass gap of a generalized quantum spin ladder

We show that a two-leg ladder Hamiltonian introduced recently by Albeverio and Fei can be made to satisfy the Hecke algebra. As a result we have found an equivalent representation of the eigenspectrum in terms of the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic XXZ chain at Delta = -5/3. The values of thermodynamic q uantities such as the ground state energy and mass gap follow from the know n XXZ results.