Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation zero on the average. Nevertheless, if the active medium is located in a resonator, then a standing mode can be excited in it. Particles then bunch under the action of the acoustic radiation forces. In this case, the oscillations of the bubbles are self-synchronized and the useful mode amplifies. The similarity of this with the Free-electron laser is useful to understand the theoretical concepts of the scheme. In a FEL, electrons move through magnetic periodic systems producing electromagnetic radiation. The radiation of the electrons is initially incoherent but then on account of the interaction with the useful electromagnetic wave they
Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation eigenstates of the Hamiltonian as well. These states are equally spaced both in energy and real space and form the so-called Wannier-Stark ladder. In the proposed scheme, an application of an electrical bias to a semiconductor superlattice is increasing the amplitude of coherent folded phonons generated by an optical pulse. This increase of the amplitude is observed for those biases in which the energy drop per period of the superlattice is greater than the phonon energy. If the superlattice is biased such that the energy drop per period of the superlattice exceeds the width of electronic minibands (Wannier-Stark regime), the