  High-contrast imaging in the visible and near-infrared (VIS/NIR) has revealed
the presence of a plethora of substructures in circumstellar disks (CSDs). One
of the most commonly observed substructures are concentric gaps that may hint
at the presence of embedded forming planets. However, direct detections of them
are rare, and thus ambiguity regarding the origin of most gap features remains.
The aim of this study is to investigate the capabilities of high-contrast
VIS/NIR imaging of directly detecting and characterizing low-mass giant planets
in gaps. To this end, a grid of models of protoplanetary disks was generated.
The models include a central T Tauri star surrounded by a face-on CSD harboring
an accreting planet, which itself is surrounded by a circumplanetary disk (CPD)
and carves a gap. We use the Monte Carlo radiative transfer code Mol3D to
generate temperature distributions and synthetic observations. Based on these
simulations, we measured the impact the planet and its CPD have on contrast
curves and quantified the impact of the observing wavelength and of five key
parameters on the determined signal strength. Then, we applied a detection
criterion on our results and assess the capabilities of SPHERE/VLT of detecting
the embedded planets. We find that a part of the investigated parameter space
includes detectable planets, and we elaborate on the implications of a
non-detection. Furthermore, we analyze the potential loss of valuable
information by the use of a too small coronagraphic mask. However, we find this
outcome to be very unlikely. Finally, within the VIS/NIR we identify for each
of the investigated basic properties of the planets and the disks the most
promising observing wavelengths that enable us to distinguish between different
underlying parameter values. We find, that the detectability and the
characterization often benefit from different observing wavelengths.
