Traveling-wave deceleration of SrF molecules

We report on the production, deceleration and detection of a SrF molecular beam. The molecules are captured from a supersonic expansion and are decelerated in the X${}^2{\mathrm{\Sigma }}^{+}(v=0,N=1)$ state. We demonstrate the removal of up to 40% of the kinetic energy with a 2 meter long modular traveling-wave decelerator. Our results demonstrate a crucial step towards the preparation of ultracold gases of heavy diatomic molecules for precision spectroscopy.