Bid document

DARPA-SN-26-124

Special Notice
Request for Information:
Resilient Ultra Short Pulsed Laser Sources

DARPA-SN-26-124

September 8, 2026

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Multi X Office
675 North Randolph Street
Arlington, VA 22203-2114

DARPA-SN-26-124

Request for Information (RFI)
Special Notice DARPA-SN-26-124
Resilient Ultra Short Pulsed Laser Sources
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Multi X Office (MXO)

OVERVIEW:

Posting Date: September 8, 2026
Responses Due: November 20, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) Technical POC: Dr. Justin Cohen, MXO Program Manager
E-mail: [email protected]

RFI DESCRIPTION:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Multi X Office (MXO) seeks information on compact, rugged millijoule-class ultra-short pulsed lasers. The goals of this Request for Information (RFI) include, but are not limited to: • Identify approaches to fieldable millijoule ultra-short pulsed lasers • Identify approaches to maintain mode-locking under environmental challenges Responses to this RFI may be used to inform future DARPA program research thrusts, goals, and performance targets.

BACKGROUND:

Since the demonstration of high pulse energy, ultra-short pulse lasers (USPL) by Strickland and Mourou in 1988, USPLs have gained widespread use in fundamental science and manufacturing. Despite their utility, they have remained large, heavy, and fragile. At the same time, integrated photonics, fabricated using CMOS technology, has demonstrated ever more capability for mode-locking, power handling, and precision tuning. Recent research has shown chip-scale mode-locked lasers (MLL), amplifiers with nanojoule pulse energy, erbium and rare earth doped waveguides, and integrated Titanium-sapphire lasers. The aforementioned results suggest several fruitful approaches to scaling pulse energy in MLLs with high repetition rates in the tens of gigahertz, beyond the reach of fiber or free-space approaches. While incremental improvement has brought USPLs from large user facilities to laboratory benchtops, and even to controlled manufacturing facilities, they remain large and sensitive to environmental effects like temperature, humidity, dust, shock, and vibration. The size, weight, power, and sensitivity severely limit the applications that can benefit from USPLs extreme field intensities. To have impact across application spaces, a general purpose USPL also requires real-time tuning of relevant laser parameters such as wavelength, pulse energy, repetition rate, and pulse shape. However,