Photo- and electroproduction of strange mesons: From elementary process to hypernuclei

The general formalism for electromagnetic production of pseudoscalar mesons off nucleons is reviewed. An effective Lagrangian model for low and medium energy photo- and electroproduction of K⁺ mesons is introduced and compared with available experimental data. Finally, the electroproduction of K⁺ mesons on complex nuclear targets is investigated and it is demonstrated that planned experiments at the CEBAF electron accelerator may shed new light on the problems of the spectroscopy of hypernuclei.