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We examine the feasibility of detecting auroral emission from the potentiallyhabitable exoplanet Proxima Centauri b. Detection of aurorae would yield anindependent confirmation of the planet's existence, constrain the presence andcomposition of its atmosphere, and determine the planet's eccentricity andinclination, thereby breaking the mass-inclination degeneracy. If ProximaCentauri b is a terrestrial world with an Earth-like atmosphere and magneticfield, we estimate the power at the 5577\AA\ OI auroral line is on the order of0.1 TW under steady-state stellar wind, or ${\sim} 100 {\times}$ stronger thanthat on Earth. This corresponds to a planet-star contrast ratio of$10^{-6}-10^{-7}$ in a narrow band about the 5577\AA\ line, although highercontrast ($10^{-4}-10^{-5}$) may be possible during periods of strongmagnetospheric disturbance (auroral power $1-10$ TW). We searched the ProximaCentauri b HARPS data for the 5577\AA\ line and for other prominent oxygen andnitrogen lines, but find no signal, indicating that the OI auroral linecontrast must be lower than $2\times 10^{-2}$ (with power $\lesssim$ 3,000 TW),consistent with our predictions. We find that observations of 0.1 TW auroralemission lines are likely infeasible with current and planned telescopes.However, future observations with a space-based coronagraphic telescope or aground-based extremely large telescope (ELT) with a coronagraph could pushsensitivity down to terawatt oxygen aurorae (contrast $7\times 10^{-6}$) withexposure times of ${\sim} 1$ day. If a coronagraph design contrast of $10^{-7}$can be achieved with negligible instrumental noise, a future concept ELT couldobserve steady-state auroral emission in a few nights.

The Pale Green Dot: A Method to Characterize Proxima Centauri b using Exo-Aurorae