A team of physicists from the University of Innsbruck and Harvard University has proposed a fundamentally new way to generate laser light: a laser without mirrors. Their study, published in Physical Review Letters, shows that quantum emitters spaced at subwavelength distances can constructively synchronize their photon emission to produce a bright, very narrow-band light beam, even in the absence of any optical cavity.



Lol, I had a paper on this “novel” idea when I was a student. Super low budget. Cool that someone has resources to advance this, but I’m certain there were other periodic quantum lasers since then.
https://www.academia.edu/826807/Photonic_crystal_formed_by_the_imaginary_part_of_the_refractive_index