Lasing without inversion: counterintuitive population dynamics in the transient regime

We explore a three-level Lambda scheme to demonstrate that the phenomenon of lasing without inversion (LWI) can be observed in the transient regime. We demonstrate that the pure LWI contribution to the gain of a probe field is distinct from both the resonant absorption (or gain) and the coherent Raman gain (or absorption) by choosing specific initial populations in the dressed-state basis. The suppression of the non-LWI (resonant and Raman) processes is followed by the "rich get richer" (capitalistic) effect for the ground-state population dynamics: Initially, the more populated ground state becomes even more populated. The conditions for the observation of the effect are specified.