Installation and commissioning of the Kaos spectrometer at MAMI

At the Institut fuer 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. In recent years the compact magnetic spectrometer Kaos was installed in the existing spectrometer facility operated by the A1 collaboration. Kaos is especially suitable for the detection of kaons. Since September 2008 measurements of kaon production on hydrogen have been successfully performed. The identification of Λ and Σ0 hyperons in the missing mass has demonstrated the capability of the extended facility to perform strangeness electro-production spectroscopy. Kaons in the angular range of 21-43 circle and momentum range of 400-600 MeV/c were detected with a survival probability of around 10% and identified by their time-of-flight. In 2009, the Kaos spectrometer will cover simultaneously electron scattering angles close to 0 circle and kaon scattering angles around 5 circle up to 15 circle in order to extract dynamical information from the K+ angular distribution.