As part of the N program established within the CLAS collaboration at the Jefferson Laboratory, experiment E93--030 focuses on the electroproduction of K^+ mesons off hydrogen. In contrast with previous efforts in the field that studied strangeness production over limited regions of phase space, the unique characteristics of the CLAS detector allow the study of kaon electroproduction over a very broad range of kinematics. For the two beam energy settings measured to date, 2.445 and 4.045~GeV/c, the data covers the 0.5 to 2.5~(GeV/c)^2 range in Q^2, with W extending from threshold up to 2.5~GeV, while -t spans the 0.2--4.5~(GeV)^2 range. As an intermediate step towards providing a more complete and revealing picture for the K^+ (electro)production mechanism, the ^1H(e,e^\prime K^+)\Lambda and ^1H(e,e^\prime K^+)\Sigma^0 reactions were studied in terms of the \Sigma^0/\Lambda ratio. The Q^2, W, and t dependence of the experimental \Sigma^0/\Lambda ratio will be shown, together with theoretical predictions based on recent isobaric models.

maintained by Publications Manager