Fractional relaxation with time-varying coefficient

From the point of view of the general theory of the hyper-Bessel operators, we consider a particular operator that is suitable to generalize the standard process of relaxation by taking into account both memory effects of power law type and time variability of the characteristic coefficient. According to our analysis, the solutions are still expressed in terms of functions of the Mittag-Leffler type as in case of fractional relaxation with constant coefficient but exhibit a further stretching in the time argument due to the presence of Erdélyi-Kober fractional integrals in our operator. We present solutions, both singular and regular in the time origin, that are locally integrable and completely monotone functions in order to be consistent with the physical phenomena described by non-negative relaxation spectral distributions. © 2014 Versita Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Wien. MSC 2010: Primary 26A33 Secondary 33E12, 34A08, 76A10.