PRECISION SYNCHRONIZATION OF OPTICAL LASERS BASED ON MTCA.4 ELECTRONICS

Optical laser have become an integral part of freeelectron laser facilities for the purposes of electron bunch generation, external seeding, diagnostics and pump-probe experiments. The ultra-short electron bunches demand a high timing stability and precision synchronization of the optical lasers. In this paper, we present the proof-ofprinciple for a laser locking application implemented on a MTCA.4 platform. The system design relies on existing MTCA.4 compliant off-the-shelf modules that are available on the market or have been developed for other applications within the particle accelerator community. Besides performance and cost, we also tried to minimize the number of out-of-crate components. Preliminary measurements of laser locking of a Yb-fiber laser, developed for electroptical diagnostics, to an external RF source are presented, and an outlook for further system development in the area of laser-to-RF synchronization is given.