Towards Ultracold Calcium Monofluoride Molecules

The production of ultracold molecular quantum gases promises to add long-range dipolar interaction to the quantum simulation toolbox. Here we first show theoretically that such dipolar interactions can lead to the formation of new phases of matter in bulk molecular Bose-Einstein condensates, such as droplet states and supersolids. Second, we present a setup to realize these phases of matter in an experiment. In this setup we work with calcium monofluoride molecules, which are characterized by large electric dipole moments and well-established laser cooling strategies. In a first step to create a gas of these molecules with high phase space density, we present the design and characterization of a cryogenic buffer gas beam source, as well as measurements of the collisional cross-sections and thermalization dynamics of barium monofluoride and calcium monofluoride with helium in the buffer gas cell.