Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation was first experimentally demonstrated in the Gigahertz range in 2009. Announced in 2010, two independent groups came up with two different devices that produce coherent phonons at any frequency in the range megahertz to terahertz. One group from the University of Nottingham consisted of A.J. Kent and his colleagues R.P. Beardsley, A.V. Akimov, W. Maryam and M. Henini. The other group from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) consisted of Ivan S. Grudinin, Hansuek Lee, O. Painter and Kerry J. Vahala from Caltech implemented a study on Phonon Laser Action in a tunable two-level system. The University of Nottingham device
Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation energy of the lattice can take discrete values for every excitation. Every one of this "excitation packages" is called phonon. An electron does not stay in an excited state for too long. It readily releases energy to return to its stable low energy state. The electrons release energy in any random direction and at any time (after their excitation). At some particular times, some electrons get excited while others lose energy in a way that the average energy of system is the lowest possible. By pumping energy into the system we can achieve a population inversion. This means that there