Polarization observables in phi meson photoproduction and the strangeness content of the proton

The contributions of direct knockout processes, in addition to the diffractive production and one-pion-exchange processes associated with the ��� and �� couplings, to the polarization observables of thephotoproduction from pro- ton are calculated. We make use of Pomeron-photon analogy and a relativistic harmonic oscillator quark model. We find that some of the double polariza- tion observables are very sensitive to a possible s¯ s admixture in the proton. It arises from the difference in the spin structures of the three different am- plitudes. This suggests that such measurements could be very useful to probe the strangeness content in the proton.