• P. Gessler, K. Rehlich
  DESY, Hamburg
• C. Bohm, A. Hidvégi
  Stockholm University, Stockholm

For the operation of the European X-Ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL), a system wide synchronous low-jitter clock and precise, adjustable triggers must be generated and distributed throughout the approximately 3.5 km long facility. They are needed by numerous diagnostics, controls, and experiments. Fast ADCs require the jitter of the distributed 1.3GHz clock to be in the order of a few pico seconds (RMS) and that it is synchronized to the accelerating RF. The phase of the 1.3GHz clock must therefore be adjustable at every endpoint. Due to cable lengths, and the temperature dependence of the propagation speed, temperature drifts are a serious issue. Therefore a complex monitoring and compensation mechanism has been developed to minimize these effects. Triggers must also be distributed throughout the system to synchronize different control or measurement tasks. The triggers must be adjustable in time in order to compensate for different cable lengths and should have a resolution of one ns but with ps stability. A prototype of this clock and trigger system has been developed and first measurements have shown, that the strong requirements can be fulfilled.