NonThermTransients · Understanding the variable and transient non-thermal emission of Galactic sources

The past decade has witnessed high-energy astrophysics make great leaps in scientific discovery and the capabilities of instrumentation. Soft and hard X-ray telescopes from 0.1 – 150 keV have yielded whole new source populations and shed light on fundamental physics questions. The current generation of air Cherenkov telescopes have successfully surveyed TeV emission from the Galactic plane revealing a population of the most energetic sources in our Galaxy. We now stand on the threshold of a new era of discovery; the recent launch of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has made many exciting, early discoveries in the 0.1 – 300 GeV energy range. Entire new variable and transient Galactic source populations have been discovered opening totally new fields of investigation. Combining the capabilities of Fermi with the upcoming fast radio survey of LOFAR and the detailed hard X-ray telescope NuSTAR will allow for the most detailed study of non-thermal timing and spectral properties of Galactic sources ever possible. Fermi neatly covers the gap between the hard X-ray and VHE (TeV) energy ranges so that we will have sensitive instruments operating simultaneously over the whole band for the first time. Enacted, this research project, will exploit these instruments together with advanced Bayesian data analysis methods to radically advance our knowledge of particle acceleration physics in Galactic shocks and jets, the extreme environments in which such acceleration is possible and the origin of cosmic-rays.