
Buffer gas cooling is a powerful new way of producing beams of cold, slow-moving molecules. In our experiments, the molecules of interest are produced by laser ablation of a suitable precursor target, inside a buffer gas cell containing helium gas at low temperature. The hot molecules thermalize with the cold helium. They can then be allowed to escape through a hole in the wall of the cell and transported to an experiment using either a magnetic or an electric guide. This technique is capable of producing high fluxes of cold molecules, moving at low speed in the lab.