The Real Compton Scattering Program at MAMI

The A2 collaboration at the Mainz Microtron has undertaken a large program of real Compton scattering experiments in order to study the nucleon polarizabilities. These parameters describe the response of the proton's internal structure to the application of an electromagnetic field. The lower order terms, called the scalar polarizabilities, had been determined by previous experiments but still had undesirably large uncertainties. The higher order terms, called the spin polarizabilities, had only been determined in various linear combinations. To study these, one needs a combination of a linearly or circularly polarized photon beam with unpolarized, longitudinally polarized, or transversely polarized targets, as well as a large acceptance detector system, all of which are available in A2. This talk will present the efforts of this program to extract these fundamental parameters, and discuss what the future entails.