Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation phonon laser action had been proposed in a wide range of physical systems such as nanomechanics, semiconductors, nanomagnets and paramagnetic ions in a lattice. Finding materials that stimulate emission was needed for the development of the SASER. The generation of coherent phonons in a double-barrier semiconductor heterostructure was first proposed around 1990. The transformation of the electric potential energy in a vibrational mode of the lattice is remarkably facilitated by the electronic confinement in a double-barrier structure. On this basis, physicists were searching for materials in which stimulated emission rather than spontaneous emission, is the dominant decay process. A device
Stimulated emission an atomic or molecular resonance, the spectral line shape function is described as a Lorentzian distribution where formula_12 is the full width at half maximum or FWHM bandwidth. The peak value of the Lorentzian line shape occurs at the line center, formula_13. A line shape function can be normalized so that its value at formula_9 is unity; in the case of a Lorentzian we obtain Thus stimulated emission at frequencies away from formula_9 is reduced by this factor. In practice there may also be broadening of the line shape due to inhomogeneous broadening, most notably due to the Doppler effect