Bibcode
Levan, Andrew J.; Jonker, Peter G.; Saccardi, Andrea; Malesani, Daniele Bjørn; Tanvir, Nial R.; Izzo, Luca; Heintz, Kasper E.; Mata Sánchez, Daniel; Quirola-Vásquez, Jonathan; Torres, Manuel A. P.; Vergani, Susanna D.; Schulze, Steve; Rossi, Andrea; D'Avanzo, Paolo; Gompertz, Benjamin P.; Martin-Carrillo, Antonio; de Ugarte Postigo, Antonio; Schneider, Benjamin; Yuan, Weimin; Ling, Zhixing; Zhang, Wenjie; Mao, Xuan; Liu, Yuan; Sun, Hui; Xu, Dong; Zhu, Zipei; Agüí Fernández, José Feliciano; Amati, Lorenzo; Bauer, Franz E.; Campana, Sergio; Carotenuto, Francesco; Chrimes, Ashley; van Dalen, Joyce N. D.; D'Elia, Valerio; Della Valle, Massimo; De Pasquale, Massimiliano; Dhillon, Vikram S.; Galbany, Lluís; Gaspari, Nicola; Gianfagna, Giulia; Gomboc, Andreja; Habeeb, Nusrin; Hartmann, Dieter; van Hoof, Agnes P. C.; Hu, Youdong; Jakobsson, Pall; Julakanti, Yashaswi; Korth, Judith; Kouveliotou, Chryssa; Laskar, Tanmoy; Littlefair, Stuart P.; Maiorano, Elisabetta; Mao, Jirong; Melandri, Andrea; Miller, M. Coleman; Mukherjee, Tamal; Oates, Samantha R.; O'Brien, Paul; Palmerio, Jesse T.; Parviainen, Hannu; Pieterse, Daniëlle L. A.; Piranomonte, Silvia; Piro, Luigi; Pugliese, Giovanna; Ravasio, Maria E.; Rayson, Ben; Salvaterra, Ruben; Sánchez-Ramírez, Rubén; Sarin, Nikhil; Shilling, Samuel P. R.; Starling, Rhaana L. C.; Tagliaferri, Gianpiero; Thakur, Aishwarya Linesh; Thöne, Christina C.; Wiersema, Klaas; Worssam, Isabelle; Zafar, Tayyaba
Bibliographical reference
Nature Astronomy
Advertised on:
9
2025
Citations
1
Refereed citations
0
Description
The nature of the minute-to-hour-long fast X-ray transients localized by telescopes such as Chandra, Swift and XMM-Newton remains mysterious, with numerous models suggested for the events. Here we report multi-wavelength observations of EP240315a, a 1,600-s-long transient detected by the Einstein Probe, showing it to have a redshift of z = 4.859. We measure a low column density of neutral hydrogen and directly detect leaking ionizing Lyman continuum. The observed properties are consistent with EP240315a being a long-duration gamma-ray burst, and these observations suggest a possible interpretation in which a substantial fraction of the X-ray-transient population are lower-luminosity examples of similar events. If correct, then sensitive narrow-field searches could be a powerful complementary probe to traditional wide-field transient detection in the identification of samples of gamma-ray-burst-like events into the epoch of reionization.