mechanism for the disk spirals,]{} if [the components]{} have highly eccentric orbits.

Recently, @vanderMarel2016b presented ALMA data at spatial resolutions of 0.16$''$, which show that the previously detected asymmetric millimeter dust ring [@Perez2014; @Pinilla2015] consists [of]{} an inner ring and an outer asymmetric feature. They also proposed a different hypothesis [that can explain]{} the disk features detected in both scattered light and thermal emission, where a vortex creates one spiral arm and a planet inside the cavity produces the other spiral arm.

Studies tried to detect stellar and [substellar]{} companions in the disk of SAO 206462. @Pontoppidan2008 ruled out a stellar companion inside the cavity from the detection of CO gas. VLT/NaCo imaging at 1.75 and 2.12 $\muup$m [discarded]{} low-mass stellar companions within the gap region ($>$0.22 $M_{\odot}$ [beyond 14 au]{}) and [brown dwarf]{} companions more massive than [$>$19 $M_{\rm{J}}$ beyond 70 au]{} [@Vicente2011][^3]. However, these limits are not sensitive to planetary-mass companions.

We present in this paper new high-contrast images of SAO 206462 covering the spectral range 0.95–2.32 $\muup$m obtained with the instrument VLT/SPHERE [@Beuzit2008] as part of the SpHere INfrared survey for Exoplanets (SHINE; Langlois et al., in prep.). We describe the observations and the data reduction [(Sects. 