Discovery of the Optical and Radio Counterpart to the Fast X-Ray Transient EP 240315a

Fast X-ray Transients (FXTs) are extragalactic bursts of soft X-rays first identified greater than or similar to 10 yr ago. Since then, nearly 40 events have been discovered, although almost all of these have been recovered from archival Chandra and XMM-Newton data. To date, optical sky surveys and follow-up searches have not revealed any multiwavelength counterparts. The Einstein Probe, launched in 2024 January, has started surveying the sky in the soft X-ray regime (0.5-4 keV) and will rapidly increase the sample of FXTs discovered in real time. Here we report the first discovery of both an optical and radio counterpart to a distant FXT, the fourth source publicly released by the Einstein Probe. We discovered a fast-fading optical transient within the 3 ' localization radius of EP 240315a with the all-sky optical survey ATLAS, and our follow-up Gemini spectrum provides a redshift, z = 4.859 +/- 0.002. Furthermore, we uncovered a radio counterpart in the S band (3.0 GHz) with the MeerKAT radio interferometer. The optical (rest-frame UV) and radio luminosities indicate that the FXT most likely originates from either a long gamma-ray burst or a relativistic tidal disruption event. This may be a fortuitous early mission detection by the Einstein Probe or may signpost a mode of discovery for high-redshift, high-energy transients through soft X-ray surveys, combined with locating multiwavelength counterparts.