Dynamics of fractionalized mean-field theories: consequences for Kitaev materials

There have been substantial recent efforts, both experimentally and theoretically, to find a material realization of the Kitaev spin-liquid–the ground state of the exactly solvable Kitaev model on the honeycomb lattice. Candidate materials are now plentiful, but the presence of non-Kitaev terms makes comparison between theory and experiment challenging. We rederive time-dependent Majorana mean-field theory and extend it to include quantum phase information, allowing the direct computation of the experimentally relevant dynamical spin-spin correlator, which reproduces exact results for the unperturbed model. In contrast to previous work, we find that small perturbations do not substantially alter the exact result, implying that $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$ is perhaps farther from the Kitaev phase than originally thought. Our approach generalizes to any correlator and to any model where Majorana mean-field theory is a valid starting point.