System and method for efficiently delivering rays from a light source to create an image

摘要

In accordance with one embodiment of the present disclosure, a system may include a polarizing beamsplitter for splitting one or more unpolarized rays received from an illumination source into a first polarized component and a second polarized component, the first polarized component and the second polarized component having orthogonal polarizations to each other. The system may also include a half-wave plate for rotating the second polarized component to the same polarization as the first polarized component. The system may further include a lens group for passing the first polarized component to a target plane as a first polarized ray, and further for separately passing the second polarized component to the target plane as a second polarized ray.

主权项

1. A system, comprising:
a polarizing beamsplitter to combine a first polarized ray received from a first illumination system with a second polarized ray received from a second illumination system to form a combined polarized ray; a second polarizing beamsplitter to split the combined polarized ray into a first polarized component and a second polarized component, the first polarized component and the second polarized component having orthogonal polarizations to each other; a half-wave plate to rotate the second polarized component to the same polarization as the first polarized component; and a lens group to pass the first polarized component to a single image generator as a first polarized ray, and further to separately pass the second polarized component to the single image generator as a second polarized ray; wherein both the first and second illumination systems comprise:
an illumination source to emit a first unpolarized ray;a beam homogenizer to redistribute an illumination spatial distribution of the one or more unpolarized rays to a plurality of different spatial distribution profiles;an illumination system polarizing beamsplitter to split the first unpolarized ray into a first polarized illumination system component and a second polarized illumination system component, the first polarized illumination system component and the second polarized illumination system component having orthogonal polarizations to each other;an illumination system half-wave plate to rotate the second polarized illumination system component to the same polarization as the first polarized illumination system component; andan illumination system lens group to pass the first polarized illumination system component to the polarizing beam splitter as a first polarized illumination system ray, and further to separately pass the second polarized illumination system component to the polarizing beamsplitter as a second polarized illumination system ray; andwherein the first polarized ray received at the polarizing beamsplitter from the first illumination system comprises at least one of the first and second polarized illumination system rays of the first illumination system, and wherein the second polarized ray received at the polarizing beamsplitter from the second illumination system comprises at least one of the first and second polarized illumination system rays of the second illumination system.