The paper reviews various schemes of lasing without population inversion with particular emphasis on these which seem to be most promising from the practical point of view. It is shown that in some cases one can attribute the lasing to the population inversion in an appropriate reference frame.
Air lasing is a concept that refers to remote no-cavity (mirrorless) optical amplification in ambient air with the air constituents as the gain media. Due to the high potential of air lasing in view of applications in atmospheric sensing, a variety of pumping schemes have been proposed so far for building up population-inverted gain media in air and producing forward and/or backward directional lasing emissions. This review paper presents an overview of recent advances in the experimental observations and physical understanding of air lasing in various pumping schemes of air molecules by intense laser fields. Special emphasis is given to the strong-field-induced N 2 + air lasing, the mechanism of which is currently still in a hot debate.