The CARMENES survey: exoplanet discoveries and insights into stellar astrophysics

The CARMENES instrument, mounted on the 3.5-m telescope of the Calar Alto observatory in Almería, Spain, was conceived to deliver high-accuracy radial velocity (RV) measurements with long-term stability to search for temperate rocky planets around a sample of nearby stars. Besides, the broad wavelength coverage could provide a range of stellar activity indicators to assess the nature of potential RV signals and also valuable spectral information to characterise the stellar targets. The CARMENES survey has been running since 2016 and has collected over 20,000 spectra leading to precise RVs for 360 targets. Target selection was aimed at minimising biases and nearly 50% of all known M dwarfs within 10 pc are included. CARMENES data have proven very successful in identifying and measuring planetary companions. And we have also shown them to be useful for a variety of additional applications such as the determination of stellar fundamental and atmospheric properties, the characterisation of stellar activity and the study of exoplanet atmospheres, among many others. In this contribution we will present the CARMENES data and the statistical properties of the sample and the spectroscopic measurements, as well as a contextual view of the exoplanet population revealed by the survey.