Information in a Photon (InPho) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Information in a Photon (InPho) opportunity, released by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through its Defense Sciences Office, is a Broad Agency Announcement focused on fundamental, early-stage research into how much information a single optical photon can carry and how that limit is governed by underlying physics and mathematics. The central theme is not incremental engineering of existing optical communications, but the basic science and unifying principles that determine photon information capacity when you deliberately exploit every physically relevant degree of freedom available to light. In practical terms, this points to research that treats a photon not just as a simple on/off carrier, but as a rich physical object whose properties (for example, polarization, phase, frequency or color, timing, spatial mode structure, orbital angular momentum, coherence properties, and related quantum or wave-optics characteristics) can potentially be harnessed to encode, transmit, and decode information more efficiently or in fundamentally different ways. The program language emphasizes "unifying physical and mathematical principles," suggesting DARPA is looking for frameworks, models, and theory that clarify what is possible in principle, what tradeoffs are unavoidable, and what rules determine capacity across different optical regimes and encoding strategies.

From an administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary government funding opportunity under DARPA BAA 10-19, titled "Information in a Photon (InPho)," and categorized under Science and Technology and other Research and Development. The announcement allowed multiple funding instruments, including cooperative agreements, grants, other transactions, and procurement contracts, giving the agency flexibility to support performers under different legal and management structures depending on the nature of the proposed work and DARPA's desired level of involvement. There was no cost sharing or matching requirement stated, which generally means proposers were not required to contribute non-federal funds as a condition of award, although proposers could still choose to propose cost share if they believed it strengthened their plan. The CFDA number listed is 12.910, which corresponds to Research and Technology Development.

Eligibility was described as unrestricted, meaning the solicitation was broadly open to a wide range of applicant types (such as universities, companies, nonprofits, and potentially other organizations), subject to any clarifications that might have appeared in the full text of the announcement. The posting date was December 16, 2009, with a closing date of June 11, 2010, and the opportunity was later archived on July 10, 2010. For access issues with the full announcement, DARPA directed applicants to contact the BAA Coordinator, indicating the standard DARPA BAA process where detailed proposal instructions, submission requirements, and any topic-specific constraints would be contained in the full announcement package.

Overall, InPho can be understood as DARPA inviting the research community to push on the foundational limits of optical information encoding at the photon level, develop the mathematical and physical theory that sets those limits, and identify how to exploit optical degrees of freedom in a principled way. While the summary text does not list specific technical areas, deliverables, or metrics, the phrasing implies interest in work that could reshape how information theory is applied to photonics, bridge classical and quantum descriptions where relevant, and produce generalizable insights that could later enable new sensing, communications, or information-processing capabilities built on deep understanding rather than ad hoc design.

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