The solar neutrino project HELLAZ: status report on the hardware and the simulation

We report the status of the solar neutrino project called HELLAZ. In a high pressure time projection chamber filled with helium, the detection of each ionization electron of the track produced by the recoil electron from elastic scattering induced by solar neutrinos, will yield the low energy, high resolution solar neutrino spectrum. Two topics are presented: the preliminary test of the direction of the primary electron track from the cloud analysis and tests of Micromegas gas chambers giving a good discrimination between adjacent ionization electrons. These two tests seem rather encouraging.