Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (SASER) refers to a device that emits acoustic radiation. It focuses sound waves in a way that they can serve as accurate and high-speed carriers of information in many kinds of applications—similar to uses of laser light. Acoustic radiation (sound waves) can be emitted by using the process of sound amplification based on stimulated emission of phonons. Sound (or lattice vibration) can be described by a phonon just as light can be considered as photons, and therefore one can state that SASER is the acoustic analogue 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 SASER was developed in 2009.
Terminology 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, acoustic laser or sound laser.
Uses and applications SASERs could have wide applications. Apart from facilitating the investigation of terahertz-frequency ultrasound, the SASER is also likely to find uses in optoelectronics (electronic devices that detect and control light—as a method of transmitting a signal from an end to the other of, for instance, fiber optics), as a method of signal modulation and/or transmission. Such devices could be high precision measurement instruments and they could lead to high energy focused sound. Using SASERs to manipulate electrons inside semiconductors could theoretically result in terahertz-frequency computer processors, much faster than the current chips.
History This concept can be more conceivable by imagining it in analogy to laser theory. Theodore Maiman operated the first functioning LASER on May 16, 1960 at Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California, A device that operates according to the central idea of the "sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" theory is the thermoacoustic laser. This is a half-open pipe with a heat differential across a special porous material inserted in the pipe. Much like a light laser, a thermoacoustic SASER has a high-Q cavity and uses a gain medium to amplify coherent waves. For further explanation see thermoacoustic heat engine. The possibility of 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 was first experimentally demonstrated in the Gigahertz range in 2009. Announced in 2010, two independent groups came up with two different devices that produce coherent phonons at any frequency in the range megahertz to terahertz. One group from the University of Nottingham consisted of A.J. Kent and his colleagues R.P. Beardsley, A.V. Akimov, W. Maryam and M. Henini. The other group from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) consisted of I.S. Grudinin, H. Lee, O. Painter and K.J. Vahala from Caltech implemented a study on Phonon Laser Action in a tunable two-level system. The University of Nottingham device 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 the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and Caltech. In 2023 researchers using a Paul trap coaxed two ions into forming a phonon laser containing fewer than 10 phonons, placing it firmly in the quantum regime, whereas previous phonon lasers had had at least 10,000 phonons.
Design SASER's central idea is based on sound waves. The set-up needed for the implementation of sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation is similar to an oscillator. An oscillator can produce oscillations without any external feed-mechanism. An example is a common sound amplification system with a microphone, amplifier and speaker. When the microphone is in front of the speaker, we hear an annoying whistle. This whistle is generated without extra contribution from the sound source, and is self-reinforced and self-sufficient while the microphone is somewhere in front of the speaker. This phenomenon, known as the Larsen effect, is the result of a positive feedback.
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