Probing nucleon strangeness structure with φ electroproduction

We study the possibility to constrain the hidden strangeness content of the nucleon by means of the polarization observables in φ meson electroproduction. We consider the OZI evading direct knockout mechanism that arises from the non-vanishing ss̄ sea quark admixture of the nucleon as well as the background of the dominant diffractive and the one-boson-exchange processes. Large sensitivity on the nucleon strangeness are found in several beam-target and beam-recoil double polarization observables. The small s and W region, which is accessible at some of the current high-energy electron facilities, is found to be the optimal energy region for extracting out the OZI evasion process.