Spontaneous emission (SE) from a two-level atom in an anisotropic photonic crystal (PC) is investigated by the fractional calculus. Physical phenomena of the SE are studied analytically by solving the fractional kinetic equations of the SE. There is a dynamical discrepancy between the SE of anisotropic and isotropic PCs. We find that, contrary to the SE phenomenon of the isotropic PC, the SE near the band edge of an anisotropic PC shows no photon-atom bound state. It is consistent with the experimental results of Barth, Schuster, Gruber, and Cichos [Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 243902 (2006)] that the anisotropic property of the system enhances the SE. We also study effects of dispersion curvatures on the changes of the photonic density of states and the appearance of the diffusion fields in the SE.

• Received 4 June 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.81.023827