Exclusive electroproduction of strange mesons with JLab 12 GeV

We summarize the physics topics which can be addressed by measurements of high-Q^2 exclusive electroproduction of strange mesons, gamma* N -> phi N, K* Lambda, K Lambda, K Sigma, at Jefferson Lab with 11 GeV beam energy. The proposed investigations are aimed both at exploring the reaction mechanism (dominance of point-like configurations) and extracting information about baryon structure from the data (generalized parton distributions, or GPDs). They include (a) probing the t-dependence of the nucleon's gluon GPD (transverse spatial distribution of gluons) in phi meson production; (b) separating the nucleon helicity-flip and nonflip quark GPDs in K* Lambda production with measurement of the Lambda recoil polarization; (c) probing strangeness polarization in the nucleon in K Lambda and K Sigma production. These studies rely only on the analysis of cross section ratios, which are less affected by the theoretical uncertainties of present GPD-based calculations than absolute cross sections.