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

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 A²Π_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.