Modeling laser cooling and molecular structure in BaF

Cold molecular gases are promising candidates for studies of cold chemistry, precision tests of fundamental symmetries and quantum simulation. 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. We present efficient Doppler, sub-Doppler and coherent cooling schemes for both bosonic and fermionic isotopologues of this species. In addition, we discuss the analysis of experimental spectra of the lowest vibrational transitions relevant for laser cooling of BaF.