Spectrometer study of φ-meson electroproduction

We report measurements of the electroproduction of φ mesons from hydrogen at Q² values of 0.23, 0.43, and 0.97 GeV² with |t| varying from 0.125 to 1.3 GeV² at each Q² point. The data show no evidence for a Q² dependence of the slope of the t distribution, the forward cross section falls with increasing Q² as the square of the φ propagator, the decay angular distributions agree with the predictions of s-channel helicity conservation, and the ratio of the longitudinal to the transverse component increases linearly with Q².