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Meson photoproduction is a key tool for the experimental investigation of the nucleon excitation spectrum. To disentangle the specific couplings of resonances, in addition to the rather well measured pion and eta photoproduction channels it is mandatory to obtain information on channels involving strange and vector mesons and higher mass pseudoscalar mesons, and the associated multi-particle final states with both charged and neutral particles. In this respect, the new BGO-OD experiment at the ELSA accelerator of the University of Bonn's Physikalisches Institut provides unique instrumentation. We describe the experiment, present its status and the initial program of measurements.

The BGO-OD experiment at the ELSA accelerator facility uses an energy tagged bremstrahlung photon beam to investigate the excitation spectrum of the nucleon. The setup consists of a highly segmented BGO calorimeter surrounding the target, with a particle tracking magnetic spectrometer at forward angles. BGO-OD is ideal for investigating the photoproduction of hadrons of non-zero strangeness. The high momentum resolution at forward angles covers a kinematic region where t-channel exchange mechanisms play a dominant role. Access to this low momentum transfer region also allows the investigation of degrees of freedom not derived from constituent quark models, for example, the role of (vector) meson -baryon interactions and dynamically generated states in photoproduction reactions. Data taking for the first part of an extensive physics programme is complete and preliminary results and ongoing analysis are presented.

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