Analysis of AC Power Dependency for Timing System at the KEK Accelerator Complex

A timing system provides high-precision signals to allow the control over a variety of hardware and software components in accelerator complex. This is guaranteed by the radio frequency (RF) and trigger signal synchronization for subsystems such as klystrons, pulsed magnet, and beam monitors. The main trigger signal should be distributed throughout the facility and repeated at the beam repetition rate. This trigger signal is usually generated by the same phase of an AC power line to follow the source of the fluctuation of an electrical grid and reduce the instability of the beam quality. To fulfill the needs of the multi-accelerator facility at KEK, apart from the normal trigger synchronization and bucket selection injection control, a beam operation scheme called the pulse-to-pulse modulation is utilized; hence, the complexity of the timing system is increased. An uncertainty in the system and a trigger signal delivery error caused by a drastic AC power line drift is observed. Further, the effort to establish a reliable timing system at KEK and several solutions to improve the system robustness are presented.