Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY) and Center for Free Electron Science (CFEL), Hamburg, Germany
CFEL, Hamburg, Germany
Cycle GmbH, Hamburg, Germany
DESY, Hamburg, Germany
Photon-science facilities such as X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) and intense-laser facilities are emerging world-wide with some of them producing sub-fs X-ray pulses. These facilities are in need of a high-precision timing distribution system, which can synchronize various microwave and optical sub-sources across multi-km distances with attosecond precision. Here, we report on a synchronous laser-microwave network that permits attosecond precision across km-scale distances. This was achieved by developing new ultrafast timing metrology devices and carefully balancing the fiber nonlinearities and fundamental noise contributions in the system. New polarization-noise-suppressed balanced optical crosscorrelators and free-space-coupled balanced optical-microwave phase detectors for improved noise performance have been implemented. Residual second- and third-order dispersion in the fiber links are carefully compensated with additional dispersion-compensating fiber to suppress link-induced Gordon-Haus jitter and to minimize output pulse duration; the link power is stabilized to minimize the nonlinearity-induced jitter as well as to maximize the signal to noise ratio for locking.
