Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation of the laser. In a SASER device, a source (e.g., an electric field as a pump) produces sound waves (lattice vibrations, phonons) that travel through an active medium. In this active medium, a stimulated emission of phonons leads to amplification of the sound waves, resulting in a sound beam coming out of the device. The sound wave beams emitted from such devices are highly coherent. The first successful SASERs were developed in 2009. Instead of a feedback-built wave of electromagnetic radiation (i.e., a laser beam), a SASER delivers a sound wave. SASER may also be referred to as "phonon laser",
Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation of direct semiconductors. The reasoning behind that comes from the fact that, due to the k-selection rule in semiconductors, interband transitions with the production of only one phonon can be only those that produce an optical phonon. However, optical phonons have a short life-time (they split into two due to anharmonicity) and therefore they add some important complications. Here we can note that even in the case of multi-stage process of acoustic phonon creation it is possible to create SASER. Examples of narrow-gap indirect semiconductors that can be used are chalcogenides PbTe, PbSe and PbS with energy gap 0.15 –