Tom G. Slanger
Senior Staff Scientist
Molecular Physics Laboratory

Tom Slanger has been at SRI since 1966, and was made an Institute Fellow in 1997. Areas of expertise include studies of atmospheric species in the laboratory, analysis of planetary airglows, energy transfer reactions in atoms and small molecules, application of astronomical instruments to atmospheric studies, and the investigation of optically forbidden transitions in small molecules.

Dr. Slanger has been involved in a variety of different projects since coming to SRI. These include:

• Laboratory studies on the primary metastable emitters in the terrestrial nightglow
• Elucidation of energy transfer pathways in CO, NO, O2, O3
• Determination of ignition thresholds in hydrogen/ozone mixtures
• Product yields in ozone photodissociation
• Destruction of oxygen metastables on surfaces
• Simulation of the Venus atmosphere in the laboratory
• Spectroscopy of metastable states of the NO molecule
• Collisional loss rates of vibrationally-excited O2
• High resolution studies of the terrestrial nightglow with astronomical instruments
• Studies of the Venus nightglow

Dr. Slanger is a member of the American Astronomical Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He is the author of 160 publications in photochemistry, collisional energy transfer, chemistry of the upper atmosphere, and spectroscopy of the terrestrial airglow and that of Venus.

He was awarded a B.S. in applied chemistry from Caltech (1956) and an M.S. from the same institution in Chemical Engineering (1957). He received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from UCLA (1965). A postdoctoral year was spent at the Centre d'Etudes Nucleaires in Saclay, France.

Conference Presentations
Past Conference Presentations

Contact
Phone: 650-859-2764
Email: tom.slanger@sri.com