  We study spontaneous radiative decay of translational levels of an atom in
the vicinity of a semi-infinite dielectric. We systematically derive the
microscopic dynamical equations for the spontaneous decay process. We calculate
analytically and numerically the radiative linewidths and the spontaneous
transition rates for the translational levels. The roles of the interference
between the emitted and reflected fields and of the transmission into the
evanescent modes are clearly identified. Our numerical calculations for the
silica--cesium interaction show that the radiative linewidths of the bound
excited levels with large enough but not too large vibrational quantum numbers
are moderately enhanced by the emission into the evanescent modes and those for
the deep bound levels are substantially reduced by the surface-induced red
shift of the transition frequency.
