STATUS OF STRANGENESS ELECTRO-PRODUCTION AT MAMI

At the Institut fur Kernphysik in Mainz, Germany, the microtron MAMI has been upgraded to 1.5 GeV electron beam energy and can now be used to study strange hadronic systems. The magnetic spectrometer KAOS from GSI was dismantled and re-installed in the spectrometer facility operated by the A1 collaboration. The spectrometer's primary purpose is to study strangeness electro-production. Its compact design and its capability to detect negative and positive charged particles simultaneously under forward scattering angles complements the existing spectrometers. In 2008, an important milestone has been reached by the successful measurement of kaon production off a liquid hydrogen target. The identification of Λ and Σ0 hyperons in the missing mass spectra has demonstrated the capability of the extended facility to perform strangeness electro-production spectroscopy. To operate KAOS as a double-arm spectrometer under zero degree scattering angle major modifications are needed. A new vacuum chamber was constructed and installed, a new coordinate detector with many thousands of channels was built and tested, a new trigger system for the high rate environment was developed, and a magnetic chicane for the primary electron beam is under construction.