Precise total cross-sections and invariant-mass distributions have been measured for photoproduction of pion pairs off the proton producing $ppi^0pi^0$ and $npi^+pi^0$ final states from the threshold region up to 800 MeV incident photon energy. Addit
ionally, beam helicity asymmetries have been measured in the second resonance region (550 MeV - 820 MeV). The experiment was performed at the tagged photon beam of the Mainz MAMI accelerator with the Crystal Ball and TAPS detectors combined to give an almost 4$pi$ solid-angle electromagnetic calorimeter. The results are much more precise than any previous measurements and confirm the chiral perturbation theory predictions for the threshold behavior of these reactions. In the second resonance region, the invariant-mass distributions of meson-meson and meson-nucleon pairs are in reasonable agreement with model predictions, but none of the models reproduce the asymmetries for the mixed-charge channel.
Beam-helicity asymmetries have been measured at the MAMI accelerator in Mainz in the three isospin channels $vec{gamma}pto pi^{+}pi^0n$, $vec{gamma}pto pi^{0}pi^0p$ and $vec{gamma}pto pi^{+}pi^{-}p$ . The circularly polarized photons, produced from b
remsstrahlung of longitudinally polarized electrons, were tagged with the Glasgow magnetic spectrometer. Charged pions and the decay photons of $pi^0$ mesons were detected in a $~4pi$ electromagnetic calorimeter which combined the Crystal Ball detector with the TAPS detector. The precisely measured asymmetries are very sensitive to details of the production processes and are thus key observables in the modeling of the reaction dynamics.
