Saturated absorption spectroscopy of buffer-gas-cooled Barium monofluoride molecules

Abstract

We report an experimental investigation on the Doppler-free saturated absorption spectroscopy of buffer-gas-cooled Barium monofluoride (BaF) molecules in a 4~K cryogenic cell. The obtained spectra with a resolution of 19~MHz, much smaller than previously observed in absorption spectroscopy, clearly resolve the hyperfine transitions. Moreover, we use these high-resolution spectra to fit the hyperfine splittings of excited $A(v=0)$ state and find the hyperfine splitting of the laser-cooling-relevant $A^2{\hat{I}}_{1/2}(v=0,J=1/2,+)$ state is about 18 MHz, much higher than the previous theoretically predicted value. This provides important missing information for laser cooling of BaF molecules.

6 pages, 3 figures