Abstract
Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are believed to originate from core collapse of massive stars. High-redshift GRBs can probe the star formation and reionization history of the early Universe, but their detection remains rare. Here we report the detection of a GRB triggered in the 0.5–4 keV band by the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) on board the Einstein Probe (EP) mission, designated as EP240315a, whose bright peak was also detected by the Swift Burst Alert Telescope and Konus-Wind through off-line analyses. At a redshift of z = 4.859, EP240315a showed a much longer and more complicated light curve in the soft-X-ray band than in gamma rays. Benefiting from a large field of view (~3,600°2) and a high sensitivity, EP-WXT captured the earlier engine activation and extended late engine activity through a continuous detection. With a peak X-ray flux at the faint end of previously known high-z GRBs, the detection of EP240315a demonstrates the great potential for EP to study the early universe via GRBs.
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Data availability
The light curves and spectra of EP-WXT, Swift-BAT and Konus-Wind in Figs. 1 and 2 are available on GitHub at https://github.com/liuyuan-naoc/EP240315a.git. The light curves of Swift-BAT GRBs are public and can be found at https://www.swift.ac.uk/burst_analyser.
Code availability
Upon reasonable request, the code (mostly in Python) used to produce the results and figures will be provided.
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Acknowledgements
This work is based on the data obtained with EP, a space mission supported by Strategic Priority Program on Space Science of Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the European Space Agency, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and CNES (grant XDA15310000), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant XDB0550200) and the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFF0711500). We acknowledge the support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 12321003, 12103065, 12333004, 12373040, 12021003), the China Manned Space Project (grants CMS-CSST-2021-A13, CMS-CSST-2021-B11) and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Y2022026, 2023331). We acknowledge the data resources and technical support provided by the China National Astronomical Data Center, the Astronomical Science Data Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Virtual Observatory. We acknowledge the observational data taken at the Nordic Optical Telescope (programmes 68-811, principal investigator D.X., and 68-020, principal investigator D.B.M.), the Very Large Telescope (programme 110.24CF, principal investigators N.R.T., S.D.V., D.B.M.), Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (programme A47TAC 42, principal investigator A.M.) and the Large Binocular Telescope (programme IT-2023B-020, PI E.M.). The work of D.S.S., D.D.F., A.V.R., A.L.L., A.E.T., M.V.U., A.G.D. and A.A.K. was carried out in the framework of the basic funding programme of the Ioffe Institute FFUG-2024-0002; A.E.T. also acknowledges financial support from Accordo ASI e INAF HERMES 2022-25-HH.0. P.G.J. has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement 101095973). R.R. and E.T. acknowledge support from the ERC under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement 101002761). L.P., G.B., G. Gianfagna and A.L.T. acknowledge useful discussions with L. Rhodes regarding the analysis and interpretation of the e-MERLIN dataset. L.P., G.B., G. Gianfagna and A.L.T. acknowledge support from the European Union Horizon 2020 programme under the AHEAD2020 project (grant agreement number 871158). L.P., G. Gianfagna and A.L.T. also acknowledge support from the ASI (Italian Space Agency) through contract 2019-27-HH.0. P.O.’B. and N.R.T. acknowledge support from UK/STFC grant ST/W000857/1. J.D. acknowledges support from NASA contract NAS5-0136. D.B.M. is funded by the European Union (ERC, HEAVYMETAL, 101071865). Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. The Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN) is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation under grant DNRF140. Y.-D.H. acknowledges financial support from INAF through the GRAWITA Large Program Grant (ID 1.05.12.01.04). D.M.-S. acknowledges support by the Spanish Ministry of Science via the Plan de Generacion de Conocimiento PID2020-120323GB-I00 and PID2021-124879NB-I00. A. Rossi acknowledges support from PRIN-MIUR 2017 (grant 20179ZF5KS). Y.-F.H. acknowledges support from the Xinjiang Tianchi Program.
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Contributions
W.Y. has been leading the EP project as principal investigator since the mission proposal stage. Y. Liu, H.S., H.G., X.-F. Wu and B.Z. initiated the study. Y. Liu, X.-F. Wu, B.Z., H.G., H.S. and D. Xu coordinated the scientific investigations of the event. Y. Liu, H.S., W.-J.Z., D.-Y.L., J.Y. and Y.-H.I.Y. processed and analysed the WXT data. Q.-Y.W., C.-K.L. and Y.C. processed and analysed the FXT data. J.-W.H. analysed the BAT light curves and simulated the detectability of WXT. J.-D.L., J.A., A.L., Y.-N.M., H.G., D.X. and J.-J.G. performed the multiwavelength afterglow modelling. H.G., X.-F. Wu and B.Z. led the theoretical investigation of the event. J.D. performed the GRB search in Swift/BAT data, as well as developing the likelihood analysis for the spectral fit, light curve and localization. G.R. performed the T90 fit. C.-Y.W. performed the spectral lag calculation. Comments and contributions were provided by the rest of the Swift-BAT GUANO team (J.A.K., T.P., S.R. and A.T.). D.S.S. and D.D.F. performed GRB search in the Konus-Wind data, the high-energy spectral analysis and upper-limit calculations with the contributions of the Konus-Wind team (A.V.R., A.L.L., A.E.T., M.V.U., A.G.D. and A.A.K.). B.-B.Z., J.Y. and Y.-H.I.Y. performed GRB search in Fermi/GBM data. J.Y. and A.L. contributed to the Amati relation. D. Xu, P.G.J., N.R.T., S.D.V., D.B.M., A.J.L., A.d.U.P., S.P.L., A.M.-C., J.Q.-V., A. Rossi, B.S., M.A.P.T., D.M.-S., M.E.R., Y.-D.H. and J.P.U.F. contributed to the optical and near-infrared data taking and analysis and provided comments on the manuscript. R.R., E.T., D.D. and J.K.L. acquired and analysed the Australia Telescope Compact Array data and provided comments on the manuscript. L.P., G.B., A.L.T. and G. Gianfagna contributed to the e-MERLIN radio data acquisition and provided comments on the manuscript. G.B. performed the analysis of the e-MERLIN radio data. Z.-X.L., C.Z., S.-N.Z., X.-J.S., S.-L.S., X.-F.Z., Y.-H.Z., Z.-M.C., F.-S.C. and W.Y. contributed to the development of the WXT instrument. C.Z., Z.-X.L., H.-Q.C., D.-H.Z. and Y. Liu contributed to the calibration of WXT data. Y. Liu, H.-Q.C., C.-C.J., W.-D.Z., D.-Y.L., J.-W.H., H.-Y.L., H.S., H.-W.P. and M.-J.L. contributed to the development of WXT data analysis software. Y.C., S.-M.J., W.-W.C., C.-K.L., D.-W.H., J.W., W.L., Y.-J.Y., Y.-S.W., H.-S.Z., J.G., J.Z., X.-F.Z., J.-J.X., J.M., L.-D.L., H.W., X.-T.Y., T.-X.C., J. Huo, Z.-J.Z., Z.-L.Z., M.-S.L., Y.-X.Z., D.-J.H., L.-M.S., F.-J.L., C.-Z.L., Q.-J.T. and H.-L.C. contributed to the development of the FXT instrument. S.-M.J., H.-S.Z., C.-K.L., J.Z. and J.G. contributed to the development of FXT data analysis software. Y. Liu, H.G., H.S., B.Z., Z.-P.Z., J.-W.H., P.O.’B., Y.J. and D. Xu contributed to the interpretation of the observations and the writing of the manuscript with contributions from all authors.
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 The upper limits (15–350 keV) of BAT and Konus-Wind in the epochs without gamma-ray detection.
The extrapolated fluxes (with 1σ uncertainty) from the WXT spectra are also shown for comparison and well below the upper limits in these epochs.
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Supplementary Figs. 1–3 and Tables 1–5.
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Liu, Y., Sun, H., Xu, D. et al. Soft X-ray prompt emission from the high-redshift gamma-ray burst EP240315a. Nat Astron 9, 564–576 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02449-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02449-8
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