TIC 142534601.01: a candidate ultra-short-period super-Earth transiting a nearby late-K/early-M dwarf, found in an independent search of TESS light curves and recovered in independent sectors

We report a new transiting-planet candidate around TIC 142534601, a T = 11.7 late-K/early-M dwarf (Teff ≈ 3990 K, R* ≈ 0.65 Rsun) at 90 pc. The signal was found in a blind box-least-squares search of the TESS 2-minute light curves of 14,122 nearby M dwarfs that have no SPOC threshold-crossing event. It was detected in Sectors 40, 41, 47 and 48 and then recovered, at a refined ephemeris and with a consistent depth, in four further sectors (20, 21, 60 and 74) of TESS-SPOC full-frame-image photometry that were not used for the detection. A joint fit of all eight sectors gives P = 0.756293 ± 0.000002 d, a depth of 363 (+60/−45) ppm, a duration of 0.86 ± 0.07 h and a planet radius of 1.35 (+0.15/−0.13) Earth radii. Odd and even transits agree, no secondary eclipse or centroid shift is seen, the transit shape is consistent with the catalog stellar density, and Gaia DR3 shows no sign of a companion (RUWE = 1.06). Difference imaging places the transit source 0.2" ± 3.3" from the target, excluding all catalogued neighbours (the nearest is 45" away); with this constraint TRICERATOPS gives a false-positive probability of 0.24 (0.28 from TESS photometry alone), with the remaining scenarios involving unresolved companions. To the best of our knowledge the signal has not been reported before (searched 31 October 2026). It is a planet candidate, not a confirmed planet; ground-based photometry, high-resolution imaging and radial velocities are needed.