Patent ID: 7573001

Claim:
A method for laser shock peeling surfaces of work pieces, comprising: producing a sequence of seed pulses having a single wavelength using a laser oscillator, the laser oscillator including a resonator, an adjustable output coupler also functioning as a cavity mirror, a gain medium positioned inside the resonator and a pump source; including producing the seed pulses in the sequence by inducing an intracavity loss into the resonator, the loss being an amount that prevents oscillation during a time that energy from the pump source is being stored in the gain medium; building up gain with energy from the pump source in the gain medium with the adjustable output coupler set to a relatively low reflectivity until formation of a single-frequency relaxation oscillation pulse in the resonator; and reducing the intracavity loss induced in the resonator by increasing the reflectivity of the adjustable output coupler upon the detection of the relaxation pulse so that built-up gain stored in the gain medium is output from the resonator in the form of a seed pulse in the sequence; supplying the sequence of seed pulses to a laser amplifier to induce a sequence of higher energy output pulses having said single frequency; and positioning said work pieces in cooperation with said output pulses to peen target regions on said surfaces.