  The Jordan-Wigner transformation is applied to study magnetic properties of
the quantum spin-1/2 $XX$ model on the diamond chain. Generally, the
Hamiltonian of this quantum spin system can be represented in terms of spinless
fermions in the presence of a gauge field and different gauge-invariant ways of
assigning the spin-fermion transformation are considered. Additionally, we
analyze general properties of a free-fermion chain, where all gauge terms are
neglected and discuss their relevance for the quantum spin system. A
consideration of interaction terms in the fermionic Hamiltonian rests upon the
Hartree-Fock procedure after fixing the appropriate gauge. Finally, we discuss
the magnetic properties of this quantum spin model at zero as well as non-zero
temperatures and analyze the validity of the approximation used through a
comparison with the results of the exact diagonalization method for finite (up
to 36 spins) chains. Besides the $m=1/3$ plateau the most prominent feature of
the magnetization curve is a jump at intermediate field present for certain
values of the frustrating vertical bond.
