Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation frequencies ) of the phonons as a function of their wave vector's "k" . The relationship between frequency "ω" and wave vector "k" is called phonon dispersion. Light and sound are similar in various ways. They both can be thought of in terms of waves, and they both come in quantum mechanical units. In the case of light we have photons while in sound we have phonons. Both sound and light can be produced as random collections of quanta (e.g. light emitted by a light bulb) or orderly waves that travel in a coordinated form (e.g. laser light). This parallelism
Stimulated emission Stimulated emission Stimulated emission is the process by which an incoming photon of a specific frequency can interact with an excited atomic electron (or other excited molecular state), causing it to drop to a lower energy level. The liberated energy transfers to the electromagnetic field, creating a new photon with a phase, frequency, polarization, and direction of travel that are all identical to the photons of the incident wave. This is in contrast to spontaneous emission, which occurs at random intervals without regard to the ambient electromagnetic field. The process is identical in form to atomic absorption in which the