Stabilized Optical Fiber Links for the XFEL

The timing synchronization scheme for the European X-Ray free electron laser facility (XFEL) is based on the generation and distribution of sub-picosecond laser pulses with actively stabilized repetition rate which are used to synchronize local RF oscillators. An integral part of the scheme is the distribution of the optical pulse stream to parts of the facility via optical fiber links. The optical path length of the fiber has to be stabilized against short-term and long-term timing jitter due to environmental effects, such as temperature drifts and acoustic vibrations, to better than 10 fs for distances ranging from tens of meters to several kilometers. In this paper, we present first experimental results toward signal transmission through a 50 m-long fiber link with femtosecond stability.