Researchers Report Evidence for Lasing Without Inversion

We have come to think that lasing requires an inversion of population between atoms in an excited state and those in a lower state: Normally the probability of absorption from the lower state equals the probability of emission from the higher state, so that the only way to have more photons coming out than going in is to start with more atoms in the upper state. It would be useful to decouple the probabilities of emission and absorption, so that one could lower the loss associated with absorption without reducing the emission.