SBIR OSW26BZ04-DV005 (Office of the Secretary of Defense): High-speed Photon-Number-Resolution Quanta Imaging Sensor Array

About this opportunity

Office of the Secretary of Defense SBIR topic — under DoW SBIR 2026 BAA (Solicitation 26.BZ, Release 4) — Accepting submissions 2026-07-22 to 2026-08-19. Objective: Demonstrate a Photon-Number-Resolution pixel array with high counting rates that remains scalable to megapixel size Description: Single-photon counting and timing achieves light detection at the fundamental quantum limit, unlocking next generation capabilities in quantum imaging and environmental sensing. Many applications require counting/timing photons at very high rates (>GHz), leading to instantaneous photon bunching (“pileup”) that causes photons to be missed. The result is data loss, degraded statistics and nonlinearities. Current detectors mitigate such deluges by breaking the flow of photons onto arrays of many small pi...