Workshop on the Physics of Excited Nucleon – NSTAR2009, Beijing, April 19 – 22, 2009

Invited plenary talk

Invited parallel talk

Oral contribution

Authors: T. C. Jude, D. I. Glazier, D. P. Watts

Title: Strange Meson Photoproduction At Threshold Energies

Keywords: Photoproduction, Crystal Ball Detector

Abstract:
The photoproduction of $K^{+}$ mesons is an important challenge to recent QCD based chiral perturbation theories in the strange quark sector and is an important constraint on the nucleon excitation spectrum. We present preliminary data from a new high precision measurement at threshold energies using the Crystal Ball detector at the MAMI-C facility. The measurement pioneers a new technique for tagging strange mesons using detailed cluster analysis in segmented calorimeters which has potential wider application at present and future hadron physics facilities.