Fractional Dynamics of the Spontaneous Emission of an Atom in Photonic Crystals

Abstract

We suggest a better mathematical method, fractional calculus, for studying the behavior of the atom-field interaction in photonic crystals. By studying the spontaneous emission of an atom in a photonic crystal with one-band isotropic model, we found that the long-time inducing memory of the spontaneous emission is a fractional phenomenon. This behavior could be well described by the fractional calculus. And the results show no steady photon-atom bound state for the atomic resonant transition frequency lying in the proximity of allowed band edge which is encountered in the previous study [J. Opt. B: Quantum Semiclass. Opt. {\bf 5}, R43 (2003)]. The correctness of this result is validated by the ``cut-off smoothing'' density of photon states (DOS) with fractional calculus. By obtaining a rigorous solution without the multiple-valued problem for the system, we show the method of fractional calculus has logically concise property.