“…The appearance of high-power pulsed FIR and SBM lasers ͑first of the TEA CO 2 -pumped, molecular-gas type 1,2 and, subsequently, of free-electron lasers 3,4 and p-Ge semiconductor devices [5][6][7][8][9][10] ͒ capable of delivering nanosecond pulses of high intensity, up to a few MW, has opened up totally new vistas in investigation of semiconductors in the FIR range and provided a basis for development of far-infrared spectroscopy of semiconductors at high excitation levels, which was first made use of at the Ioffe Physicotechnical Institute. 11 In this frequency range, the high radiation intensity gives rise to a variety of nonlinear phenomena in semiconductors and semiconductor structures ͑see, e.g., review 12 ͒, such as, for example, multiphoton absorption, [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] absorption saturation ͑bleaching͒, [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] nonlinear cyclotron resonance, 31,32 impact ionization, 33,34 nonlinear photoacoustic spectroscopy, 35 high-harmonic generation, 36,37 and the high-frequency Stark effect, 38 whose characteristics differ substantially from their counterparts observed both in the visible and infrared ranges and in the range extending from microwaves to dc electric fields. The reason for this lies in that the FIR-SBM range is actually a domain where the interaction in the electronphoton system undergoes a transition from the quantum to classical limit, thus creating a unique possibility to study the same physical phenomenon in conditions where by...…”