Vertical Beam Polarization at MAMI

For the first time a vertically polarized electron beam has been used for physics experiments at MAMI in the energy range between 180 and 855 MeV. The beam-normal single-spin asymmetry An, which is a direct probe of higher-order photon exchange beyond the first Born approximation, has been measured in the reaction C12(e→,e′)C12. Vertical polarization orientation was necessary to measure this asymmetry with the existing experimental setup. In this paper we describe the procedure to orient the electron polarization vector vertically, and the concept of determining both its magnitude and orientation with the available setup. A sophisticated method has been developed to overcome the lack of a polarimeter setup sensitive to the vertical polarization component.