On a French AZERTY keyboard the circumflex accent (carat) is designed (like the German umlaut - 2 dots above a vowel) to be used with certain vowels and sits above them like a hat. The convention for using the circumflex (carat) with a vowel is

- enter carat sign (nothing is seen)
- enter the vowel (the vowel with circumflex accent appears)

I have never needed to display the circumflex sign in any other way until now. Talking with some friends in IT support, they tell me that the convention for displaying the cicumflex (carat) by itself is

- enter circumflex (nothing displays)
- enter space (cicumflex/carat displays)

PG seems to have adopted this convention, without mentioning it in the documentation, and it appears that by trial and error I hit upon the "industry standard" solution

ASCII codes are also a solution, but not very elegant.

Gear : HP Pavillion 14-bf0xx Laptop, Win 10 family 64bit, i7-7500U CPU@2.70GHz, 8Gb memory, BIAB 2020, Zoom U-44, Reaper (beginner). Various electric and acoustic guitars, bass, mandolin.
Setting up small home recording studio by mikes and XLR for fun.