Commissioning of a Fully-Automated, Pulsed Optical Timing Distribution System at Dalian Coherent Light Source

Single-Mode Fiber Based Pulsed-Optical Timing Link with Few-Femtosecond Precision in SwissFEL

“…Please note that the BOC output is clipped above ±4 V due to the saturation of the output amplifier. The 800-m SM fiber link has an integrated timing jitter of only 1.14 fs RMS above 1 Hz (see Fig.2(b)) which is comparable to the results obtained with PM fiber links in[4]. Figure2(c)shows the long-term timing drift measured by the out-of-loop BOC with 2-Hz sampling rate and no averaging.…”

“…In these facilities, scientists have to synchronize numerous pulsed-lasers and RF sources across multi-kilometer distances to the desired temporal precision. Recently, it has been shown that pulsed-optical timing distribution systems (TDS) using polarization-maintaining (PM) fibers can deliver sub-femtosecond timing precision [2] which has been implemented in XFEL facilities in Germany [3] and China [4]. Timing distribution via non-PM single-mode (SM) fiber links offers an alternative to the PM version over short distances (<1 km) where the polarization mode dispersion (PMD) of the SM link is relatively low and the receiver at the end of the link doesn't require PM input.…”