Rene Verreault
Rene Verreault | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Saguenay, Quebec, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Known for | Foucault pendulum anomalies, anisosphere model, Allais effect |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | University of Quebec at Chicoutimi |
René Verreault is a Canadian physicist and professor of physics in the Department of Fundamental Sciences at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, UQAC) in Saguenay, Quebec, Canada. He is known for his high-precision Foucault pendulum experiments and for developing the "anisosphere" model as a means of interpreting the anomalous behaviour of spherical pendulums.
Biography
Verreault has spent his academic career in physics at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, where he is a professor in the Department of Fundamental Sciences and director of research. His published work in physics dates to the early 1960s, with early papers on thermal transpiration in helium (Canadian Journal of Physics, 1963) and on the crystallographic, optical and magnetic properties of Eu₂SiO₄ (1971). He is also president of the firm RV Instruments inc.
In 2014, his firm secured a contract to translate Maurice Allais's 760-page physics treatise L'Anisotropie de l'espace into English, a project undertaken with the collaboration of other scientists and supported in part by the Paris Tech Foundation.
Work
Verreault's principal research concerns the dynamics of the Foucault pendulum and the interpretation of small precession anomalies observed in long-running pendulum experiments. Working with a Foucault pendulum installed in the cathedral of Chicoutimi, he developed data-processing methods—including backward and forward convolution algorithms and an electronic recording alidade—that substantially improve the precision with which swinging azimuth, amplitude, and period can be measured.
Building on equations of motion originally derived by Kamerlingh Onnes, Verreault sought to account for the tendency of Foucault pendulums to develop elliptical orbits. He introduced the concept of the anisosphere, a differential phase-space representation in which anisotropic two-dimensional oscillator motion is mapped onto a spherical surface, using the isomorphism of the Poincaré sphere. Within this framework he introduced the notion of "biresonance" to describe spherical pendulum motion and to clarify a pendulum's natural response to various anisotropic conditions, including Airy precession. His papers on the anisosphere appeared in the European Physical Journal Applied Physics (2017) and in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series (2018).
Verreault has also investigated the Allais effect, an unexplained anomaly reported during solar eclipses. During the annular solar eclipse of 22 September 2006, his pendulum was transported by air cargo and installed on the Saint-Denis campus of the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane at Cayenne, French Guiana, in an attempt to detect the effect. This line of research contributed to a 2010 colloquium sponsored by the Maldivian Department of Science and Technology and to the collective volume Should the Laws of Gravitation Be Reconsidered? (Apeiron, Montreal, 2011), which gathered contributions from some 37 authors.