Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation frequencies ) of the phonons as a function of their wave vector's "k" . The relationship between frequency "ω" and wave vector "k" is called phonon dispersion. Light and sound are similar in various ways. They both can be thought of in terms of waves, and they both come in quantum mechanical units. In the case of light we have photons while in sound we have phonons. Both sound and light can be produced as random collections of quanta (e.g. light emitted by a light bulb) or orderly waves that travel in a coordinated form (e.g. laser light). This parallelism
Stimulated emission in such an excited state may thus result in radiation which has a narrow spectrum (centered around one wavelength of light), but the individual photons would have no common phase relationship and would also emanate in random directions. This is the mechanism of fluorescence and thermal emission. An external electromagnetic field at a frequency associated with a transition can affect the quantum mechanical state of the atom without being absorbed. As the electron in the atom makes a transition between two stationary states (neither of which shows a dipole field), it enters a transition state which does have a dipole