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A 'salty' source of coherent light
Roland Piquepaille writes "Coherent light is produced by a beam of photons that all have the same frequency and are all at the same phase. And today lasers are the only form of technology that we know able to create such light. But by sending shock waves inside a humble crystalline material -- kitchen salt -- researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have found a new way to produce coherent light for the first time in 50 years -- at least in the terahertz frequency range. This could lead to applications in optical communications, quantum computing or shock diagnostics. Read more for additional details and references about this discovery."
We're finally about to discover how to extract sunlight out of cucumbers!
The missing step was pickles!
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Actually, I did nor see any experiment in this paper. It only consists in modelling.
Concerning sonic stimulation, I'm not sure it could work, but I suppose it would be even less intense. My main concern is about lifetime. How many shockwaves can a crystal support? Remember that defects in the crystal structure are going to destroy the coherence of the emitted light.