Kaon Photoproduction on the Nucleon : Status and Future Prospects

Kaon photoand electroproduction off the nucleon is investigated in the framework of an isobaric model up to energies of about 1 GeV above threshold for all six isospin channels. The hadronic coupling constants in the model are determined by fitting to the available experimental data. We give a brief status report on the state of these models and discuss problems to be attacked in the future. We include hadronic form factors and show that they are essential for a proper description of the dynamics even though their inclusion has to be done carefully in order to preserve gauge invariance. We also investigate the effects of the K electromagnetic form factors for two quark models on the longitudinal and transverse differential cross sections. It is found that only the reaction n(e, eK)Λ is sufficiently sensitive to extract the K form factor.