I am using amsmath in a two-column IEEEtran document class and at a certain point I typed this equation:
\begin{equation}
A = \sum_{j=1}^{J} \frac{\left[ e^{-\left( \frac{x_1^a}{2\sigma^2} \right)^2} - e^{-\left( \frac{x_2^a}{2\sigma^2} \right)^2} \right]^2}{\Phi\left( \frac{x_1^a}{\sigma} \right) - \Phi\left( \frac{x_2^a}{\sigma} \right)}
\end{equation}
The issue is that this code produces the following result:

As you see, as the exponential is centralized in the brackets of the fraction numerator, there is a strange blank space above the fraction bar. Is there a way to vertically move the content inside the brackets, so I can make this blank space disappear?
Considerations: 1- I cannot use \exp instead of e^{}, as the former makes the equation longer and it does not fit the linewidth. 2- If I use manually sized delimiter \Big, etc, I can adjust this space, but the result does not look good either.


