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Proxima Centauri is known to host an earth-like planet in its habitable zone;very recently a second candidate planet was proposed based on radialvelocities. At quadrature, the expected projected separation of this newcandidate is larger than 1 arcsec, making it a potentially interesting targetfor direct imaging. While difficult, identification of the optical counterpartof this planet would allow detailed characterization of the closest planetarysystem. We searched for a counterpart in SPHERE images acquired during fouryears through the SHINE survey. In order to account for the large orbitalmotion of the planet, we used a method that assumes the circular orbit obtainedfrom radial velocities and exploits the sequence of observations acquired closeto quadrature in the orbit. We checked this with a more general approach thatconsiders keplerian motion, K-stacker. We did not obtain a clear detection. Thebest candidate has S/N=6.1 in the combined image. A statistical test suggeststhat the probability that this detection is due to random fluctuation of noiseis < 1% but this result depends on the assumption that distribution of noise isuniform over the image. The position of this candidate and the orientation ofits orbital plane fit well with observations in the ALMA 12m array image.However, the astrometric signal expected from the orbit of the candidate wedetected is 3-sigma away from the astrometric motion of Proxima as measuredfrom early Gaia data. This, together with the unexpectedly high flux associatedwith our direct imaging detection, means we cannot confirm that our candidateis indeed Proxima c. On the other hand, if confirmed, this would be the firstobservation in imaging of a planet discovered from radial velocities and thesecond one (after Fomalhaut b) of reflecting circumplanetary material. Furtherconfirmation observations should be done as soon as possible.

Searching for the near infrared counterpart of Proxima c using multi-epoch high contrast SPHERE data at VLT