21st century optical engineering: Manipulating nonequilibrium many body effects to Create new TERA-MIR sources

The generation of coherent, high power TERA-MIR radiation with compact steady state sources operating at room temperature is one of the main technological challenges of the early 21^st century. In this talk, I will review the most recent results on different types of sources and than focus on predictive simulations of Quantum Cascade Lasers, which are the best candidate sources for this spectral range.