Inversionless laser from a closed multilevel system

We show that a closed four-level system can exhibit lasing without population inversion in any state basis. The same system can be also made to exhibit lasing without population inversion in the bare-state basis but with population inversion in the dressed-state basis. We derive the conditions of lasing without inversion and examine the dependence of the gain on various system parameters. The lasing threshold and the steady-state photon numbers are calculated. Comparison with a ssV-type, three-level model is presented.