| 摘要 |
<p><P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an optical scanner which uses a polarization bistable VCSEL and a current control method thereby reduces the number of light sources therein to half the conventional one, and attains speeding-up of a polarization switching to a nano-second order and nonetheless requires no additional parts apparently, is compact and attains super high-speed and highly efficiently utilizes light, and to provide an image forming apparatus using the same. <P>SOLUTION: The optical scanner is provided in which utilizing the fact that, at the region other than a bistable region, oscillation in either polarization direction is caused according to the level of the value of the applied electric current, the electric current is applied in such a manner that the current value smaller than the lower limit in the bistable region and the current value higher than the upper limit are switched, whereby output laser beam is input into a polarized beam splitter, and the outlet of the laser beam emitted from the polarized beam splitter is differentiated according to the polarization direction and introduced into different photoreceptors, so that the time division exposure of the two photoreceptors can be performed using a single light source. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2009,JPO&INPIT</p> |
