Krumbling Magnons in Kitaev Model

We present a spin wave picture for a-RuCl3, a material with significant Kitaev interaction. Strong anisotropic terms lead to three-magnon interaction that we estimate with a simple approach, without a rigorous calculation of the vertex, solving Dyson’s equation self-consistently. Turns out it matches experiment and numerics pretty well. Additional contribution of longitudinal fluctuations improves the agreement.