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 the ground state to transition into the excited state, then what is called a population inversion is created. When light of the appropriate frequency passes through the inverted medium, the photons are either absorbed by the atoms that remain in the ground state or the photons stimulate the excited atoms to emit additional photons of the same frequency, phase, and direction. Since more atoms are in the excited state than in the ground state then an amplification of the input intensity results. The population inversion, in units of atoms per cubic meter, is where "g" and "g" are the degeneracies