Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation vector in the second proposed scheme, is supposed to be determined by magnitude of in-plane magnetic field. Therefore, such kind of SASER is tunable (i.e. its wavelength of operation can be altered in a controlled manner). Common semiconductor lasers can be realised only in direct gap semiconductors. The reasoning behind that is that a pair of electron and hole near minima of their bands in an indirect gap semiconductor can recombine only with production of a phonon and a photon, due to energy and momentum conservation laws. This kind of process is weak in comparison with electron-hole recombination in a
Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation operates at about 440 GHz, while the Caltech device operates in the megahertz range. According to a member of the Nottingham group, the two approaches are complementary and it should be possible to use one device or the other to create coherent phonons at any frequency in the megahertz to terahertz range. A significant result rises from the operating frequency of these devices. The differences between the two devices suggest that SASERs could be made to operate over a wide range of frequencies. Work on the SASER continues at the University of Nottingham, the "Lashkarev Institute of Semiconductor Physics" at