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The He I λ10833 Å triplet is a powerful tool for characterising the upper atmosphere of exoplanets and tracing possible mass loss. Here, we analysed one transit of GJ 1214 b observed with the CARMENES high-resolution spectrograph to study its atmosphere via transmission spectroscopy around the He I triplet. Although previous studies using lower resolution instruments have reported non-detections of He I in the atmosphere of GJ 1214 b, we report here the first potential detection. We reconcile the conflicting results arguing that previous transit observations did not present good opportunities for the detection of He I, due to telluric H2O absorption and OH emission contamination. We simulated those earlier observations, and show evidence that the planetary signal was contaminated. From our single non-telluric-contaminated transit, we determined an excess absorption of 2.10−0.50+0.45% (4.6 σ) with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 1.30−0.25+0.30 Å. The detection of He I is statistically significant at the 4.6 σ level, but repeatability of the detection could not be confirmed due to the availability of only one transit. By applying a hydrodynamical model and assuming an H/He composition of 98/2, we found that GJ 1214 b would undergo hydrodynamic escape in the photon-limited regime, losing its primary atmosphere with a mass-loss rate of (1.5–18) × 1010 g s−1 and an outflow temperature in the range of 2900–4400 K. Further high-resolution follow-up observations of GJ 1214 b are needed to confirm and fully characterise the detection of an extended atmosphere surrounding GJ 1214 b. If confirmed, this would be strong evidence that this planet has a primordial atmosphere accreted from the original planetary nebula. Despite previous intensive observations from space- and ground-based observatories, our He I excess absorption is the first tentative detection of a chemical species in the atmosphere of this benchmark sub-Neptune planet. © ESO 2022., CARMENES is an instrument at the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars”, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. This work was based on data from the CARMENES data archive at CAB (CSIC-INTA) and made use of resources from the AstroPiso collaboration. We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and the ERDF “A way of making Europe” through projects PID2019-109522GB-C5[1:4], PID2019-110689RB-I00, PGC2018-098153-B-C31, and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” and “María de Maeztu” awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (CEX2019-000920-S), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737), the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via the ERC Advanced Grant Origins no. 832428 and via grant agreement no. 694513, the Excellence Cluster ORIGINS funded by the DFG under Germany’s Excellence Strategy EXC-2094 no. 390783311, and the Generalitat de Catalunya via the CERCA programme.

Ultra-hot Jupiters (UHJs) are gas giants with very high equilibrium temperatures. In recent years, multiple chemical species, including various atoms and ions, have been discovered in their atmospheres. Most of these observations have been performed with transmission spectroscopy, although UHJs are also ideal targets for emission spectroscopy due to their strong thermal radiation. We present high-resolution thermal emission spectroscopy of the transiting UHJ KELT-20b/MASCARA-2b. The observation was performed with the CARMENES spectrograph at orbital phases before and after the secondary eclipse. We detected atomic Fe using the cross-correlation technique. The detected Fe lines are in emission, which unambiguously indicates a temperature inversion on the dayside hemisphere. We furthermore retrieved the temperature structure with the detected Fe lines. The result shows that the atmosphere has a strong temperature inversion with a temperature of 4900 ± 700 K and a pressure of 10−4.8−1.1+1.0 bar at the upper layer of the inversion. A joint retrieval of the CARMENES data and the TESS secondary eclipse data returns a temperature of 2550−250+150 K and a pressure of 10−1.5−0.6+0.7 bar at the lower layer of the temperature inversion. The detection of such a strong temperature inversion is consistent with theoretical simulations that predict an inversion layer on the dayside of UHJs. The joint retrieval of the CARMENES and TESS data demonstrates the power of combing high-resolution emission spectroscopy with secondary eclipse photometry in characterizing atmospheric temperature structures. © ESO 2022., F.Y. acknowledges the support of the DFG Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars” (RE 1664/21-1). CARMENES is an instrument for the Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán (CAHA) at Calar Alto (Almería, Spain), operated jointly by the Junta de Andalucía and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC). CARMENES was funded by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through projects FICTS-2011-02, ICTS-2017-07-CAHA-4, and CAHA16-CE-3978, and the members of the CARMENES Consortium (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Landessternwarte Königstuhl, Institut de Ciències de l’Espai, Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Hamburger Sternwarte, Centro de Astrobiología and Centro Astronómico Hispano-Alemán), with additional contributions by the MINECO, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Major Research Instrumentation Programme and Research Unit FOR2544 “Blue Planets around Red Stars”, the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, the states of Baden-Württemberg and Niedersachsen, and by the Junta de Andalucía. Based on data from the CARMENES data archive at CAB (CSIC-INTA). We acknowledge financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and the ERDF through projects PID2019-109522GB-C51/2/3/4, PGC2018-098153-B-C33, AYA2016-79425-C3-1/2/3-P, ESP2016-80435-C2-1-R and the Centre of Excellence “Severo Ochoa” and “María de Maeztu” awards to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (SEV-2015-0548), Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and Centro de Astrobiología (MDM-2017-0737), and the Generalitat de Catalunya/CERCA programme. T.H. and P.M. acknowledge support from the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program via the ERC Advanced Grant Origins 83 24 28. N.C. and A.S.L. acknowledge funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 694513.

The Scorpius-Centaurus (Sco-Cen) young and nearby massive star-forming region is particularly well suited for extrasolar planet searches with both direct imaging and radial velocity (RV) techniques. The RV search, however, is challenging, as the stars are faster rotators on average than their older stellar counterparts of similar spectral types. Moreover, the RV time series show strong signatures of stellar variability (spots and faculae) and/or stellar pulsations. Our aim is to search for giant planets (GPs) and brown dwarfs at short orbital distances around star members of the Sco-Cen association. We also aim at using these data together with others available on young stars to estimate the GP occurrence rate for young stars for periods of up to 1000 days. We used the HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6m telescope at the La Silla Observatory to monitor 88 A-F Sco-Cen stars. To improve our statistics and analysis, we combined this survey with two previous surveys that focused on young nearby stars (YNS) to compute companion occurrence rates from a sample of 176 young A-M stars. We report the discovery of a massive hot-Jupiter candidate around HD 145467, together with the discovery of one probable short-period (P < 10 days) brown dwarf around HD 149790. In addition, we confirm the binary nature of eight single-line binaries: HD 108857, HD 108904, HD 111102, HD 114319, HD 121176, HD 126488, HD 126838, and HD 133574. From our sample, we obtain a GP ($m_c\in[1;13] M_{Jup}$) occurrence rate of $0.7_{-0.2}^{+1.6} \ \%$ for periods between 1 and 1000 days and a brown dwarf ($m_c\in[13;80] M_{Jup}$) occurrence rate of $0.6_{-0.2}^{+1.4} \ \%$, in the same period range. In addition, we report a possible lack of close ($P\in[1;1000] days$) GPs around young F-K stars compared to their older counterparts, with a confidence level of 95%., 40 pages, 28 Figures, 7 Tables