VLT/CRIRES+ observations of warm Neptune WASP-107 b. Challenges in detecting molecules with ground-based transmission spectroscopy of cooler and cloudy exoplanets

The atmospheres of transiting exoplanets can be studied spectroscopically using space-based or ground-based observations. Each has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, so there are benefits to both approaches. This is especially true for more challenging targets such as cooler, smaller exoplanets whose atmospheres most likely contain many molecular species and cloud decks. We aim to study the atmosphere of the warm Neptune-like exoplanet WASP-107 b (T_ ≈ 740 K). Several molecular species have been detected in this exoplanet in studies using the space-based JWST, and we aim to confirm and expand upon these detections by using the ground-based VLT and evaluating how well our findings agree with previously retrieved atmospheric parameters. eq We observed two transits of with VLT/ŗiresp and created cross-correlation templates of the target atmosphere based on results from previous studies. We created different templates to investigate the impact of varying volume mixing ratios of species and the inclusion or exclusion of clouds. Considering this target's observational challenges, we created simulated observations prior to evaluating our real data in order to assess our expected detection significances with the cross-correlation technique. We of two molecular species, CO ( (. This previous space-based detections and demonstrates, for the first time, the capability of VLT/ŗiresp to detect species in targets cooler than hot Jupiters using transmission spectroscopy. We show that our analysis is sensitive to the inclusion of clouds but less so to different volume mixing ratios. Interestingly, our deviates, and we speculate on the possible reasons for this effect. We demonstrate that the error budget for these relatively cool exoplanets is severely reduced in comparison to hotter exoplanets and emphasise the need for further work in the context of high-resolution spectroscopy. report cross-correlation signals and H2O in our ̨pvsys maps supports signal maximum notably but consistently from its expected location in the ̨p direction of our maps