Modelling laser cooling in barium monofluoride molecules

Cold molecular gases are promising candidates for studies of cold chemistry, precision tests of fundamental symmetries and quantum simulation. However, while there has recently been significant progress in the direct cooling of molecules, the preparation of a new molecular species in the cold temperature regime still requires a careful optimization of the available cooling techniques. Motivated by our experiments on barium monofluoride (BaF), we report here on the simulation of laser cooling for this species, using multi-level rate equations and optical Bloch equations. This allows us to identify optimized strategies and parameter regimes for the realization of a cold molecular gas of BaF.