Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation implies that lasers should be as feasible with sound as they are with light. In the 21st century, it is easy to produce low frequency sound in the range that humans can hear (~20 kHz), in either a random or orderly form. However, at the terahertz frequencies in the regime of phonon laser applications, more difficulties arise. The problem stems from the fact that sound travels much slower than light. This means that the wavelength of sound is much shorter than light at a given frequency. Instead of resulting in orderly, coherent phonon laser structures that can produce terahertz sound,
Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation an optical cavity, but in a different active medium. An example of an active medium is the superlattice. A superlattice can consist of multiple ultra-thin lattices of two different semiconductors. These two semiconductor materials have different band gaps, and form quantum wells—which are potential wells that confine particles to move in two dimensions instead of three, forcing them to occupy a planar region. In the superlattice, a new set of selection rules is composed that affects the flow-conditions of charges through the structure. When this set-up is excited by a source, the phonons start to multiply while they reflect on