Stars are tidally disrupted and accreted when they approach supermassive black holes(SMBHs)closely,producing a flare of electromagnetic radiation.The majority of the(approximately two dozen)tidal disruption events(TDEs)identified so far have been discovered by their luminous,transient X-ray emission.TDEs can be used to reveal otherwise dormant massive black holes in normal galaxies and to study black hole accretion processes.Recent discoveries of a few jetted events by Swift indicated that relativistic jets can be launched in at least some of the TDEs.Once TDEs are detected in much larger numbers,in future dedicated transient surveys,a wealth of new applications will become possible.Here,we present the proposed Einstein Probe mission,which is a dedicated time-domain soft X-ray all-sky monitor aiming at detecting X-ray transients including TDEs in large numbers.The mission consists of a wide-field micro-pore Lobster-eye imager(60deg ×60deg),and is designed to carry out an all-sky transient survey at energies of 0.5–4 keV.It will also carry an X-ray telescope of the same micro-pore optics for follow-ups,with a smaller field-of-view.It will be capable of issuing public transient alerts rapidly,in order to trigger multi-wavelength follow-up observations worldwide.