Abstract

High-statistics measurements of differential cross sections and spin density matrix elements for the reaction gamma p -> phi p have been made using the CLAS detector at Jefferson Lab. We cover center-of-mass energies (v s) from 1.97 to 2.84 GeV, with an extensive coverage in the phi production angle. The high statistics of the data sample made it necessary to carefully account for the interplay between the f natural lineshape and effects of the detector resolution, that are found to be comparable in magnitude. We study both the charged-(phi -> K+ K-) and neutral( phi ->(KsKL0)-K-0) K (K) over bar decay modes of the phi Further, for the charged mode, we differentiate between the cases where the final K-track is directly detected or its momentum reconstructed as the total missing momentum in the event. The two charged-mode topologies and the neutral-mode have different resolutions and are calibrated against each other. Extensive usage is made of kinematic fitting to improve the reconstructed f mass resolution. Our final results are reported in 10- and mostly 30-MeV-wide root s bins for the charged-and the neutral-modes, respectively. Possible effects from K+Lambda* channels with pK (K) over bar final states are discussed. These present results constitute the most precise and extensive phi photoproduction measurements to date and in conjunction with the omega photoproduction results recently published by CLAS, will greatly improve our understanding of low energy vector meson photoproduction.