A trigger system has been designed and implemented for the
external-target experiment (CEE), which is under construction at the
heavy ion facility in Lanzhou, cooling storage ring (HIRFL-CSR). The
experiment aims at studying high-density nuclear matter properties
with heavy ion collisions in the GeV energy regime. The trigger
system adopts a master-slave structure and a serial data
transmission mode using optical fiber to deal with multi
subdetectors and long-distance signal flow. The trigger logic, based
on the field programmable gate array (FPGA) technologies, can be
accessed by means of command register and remotely reconfigured
online according to the experimental settings. The trigger system
has been tested in a test beam experiment involving the subdetector
prototypes. It is demonstrated that the trigger system functions
correctly and meets physical requirements of the experiment.