LIGHT SOURCE, LIGHT SOURCE DEVICE, LASER IMAGE FORMING DEVICE AND INTEGRATED CIRCUIT

摘要

A light source (10) is provided with a laser oscillator having a semiconductor laser (11), a driving circuit (18) for the semiconductor laser (11), an ACC circuit (13), an APC circuit (14) and a switch (SW) (15); and a starting drive current storage device (16). A driving current at the time of starting laser driving is controlled to be constantly fixed, and power of a laser beam output is controlled by switching to APC operation after starting lighting. Thus, load on the laser is reduced to prevent a drive current value at the time of starting lighting from increasing, and long-term reliability of the laser is ensured.