Spectroscopic study of light Lambda hypernuclei via the (e,e'K+) reaction

Hypernuclear production through the (e,e'K+) reaction makes it possible to realize sub-MeV high-resolution spectroscopy of Λ hypernuclei thanks to the availability of high quality primary beams. It is in contrast to the (K?,L?) and (L+,K+) reactions which use secondary beams of pions and kaons. Even though hypernuclear cross sections are much smaller than those from meson beams, the (e,e?K+) reaction has advantageous features for Λ hypernuclear production. A goal of the present study is to further explore and establish (e,e?K+) spectroscopy as a tool to investigate Λ hypernuclei, succeeding the pioneering experiment JLab E89-009, which was successfully carried out previously. A 1.8 GeV electron beam hit targets at the entrance of the splitter magnet in JLab?s Hall C. A positive kaon and a scattered electron were deflected by the splitter magnet to opposite directions and guided to the high resolution kaon spectrometer (HKS) and the scattered electron spectrometer (Enge), respecti