Stimulated emission energy of an absorbed photon causes an identical but opposite atomic transition: from the lower level to a higher energy level. In normal media at thermal equilibrium, absorption exceeds stimulated emission because there are more electrons in the lower energy states than in the higher energy states. However, when a population inversion is present, the rate of stimulated emission exceeds that of absorption, and a net optical amplification can be achieved. Such a gain medium, along with an optical resonator, is at the heart of a laser or maser. Lacking a feedback mechanism, laser amplifiers and superluminescent sources also function
Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation electrons become localized in the quantum wells and vertical electron transport takes place via hopping between neighboring quantum wells, which may be phonon assisted. As it had been shown previously, under these conditions stimulated phonon emission can become the dominant phonon-assisted hoping process for phonons of an energy value close to the Stark splitting. Thus, coherent phonon amplification is theoretically possible in this type of system. Together with the increase in amplitude, the spectrum of the bias-induced oscillations is narrower than the spectrum of the coherent phonons at zero bias. This shows that coherent amplification of phonons due to stimulated