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The time domain remains, in many respects, the least explored of parameterspaces in astronomical studies. The purpose of this article is to encourage theSPICA community to consider the potential of rapid infrared timingobservations. The specific example considered is that of variable emission fromrelativistic jets in compact accreting objects, whose formation and poweringmechanisms we still do not understand. Infrared observations have the potentialto give us fundamental insight on the conditions required for jet formation inaccreting stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars. This is because particleacceleration is thought to be magnetically-driven, and the spectral transitionbetween optically-thin and self-absorbed jet synchrotron radiation lies in theinfrared. We review recent observations from WISE showing that we have thecapability to measure key physical parameters of the jet, and theirtime-dependence on rapidly-changing conditions in the accretion flow around theblack hole (on timescales of just a few seconds). SPICA will provide abreakthrough in this field because of its sensitivity and broadband coverage,and we detail an example SPICA observation on short (tens of milliseconds)timescales. We believe that SPICA has the potential to make great impact ontime domain science, and we discuss some technical requirements that willenable this.

Infrared timing with SPICA: Probing the formation of stellar-mass compact object jets in real-time