POLARIZING ILLUMINATION DEVICE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To enable uniform illumination having high utilization efficiency of light, by taking in a light beam being not incident on a polarizing splitter means among incident light beams inside a combiner and lining up the polarizing directions. SOLUTION: A light beam passing through a reflection plate member RP is made incident on a fly-eye lens FE composed of many condensing lens elements laterally arranged along a plane perpendicular to the optical axis AX. The incident light beam is divided by each lens element and forms the image of light source on a plane V2 in the vicinity of the exit plane of the fly-eye lens FE. The light beams from many primary images of light source S1 formed on the plane V2 are made incident on a combiner CB. The combiner CB lines up the polarizing directions of light transmitted from the light source S and having random polarizing component and converts it to a polarizing light beam having a specified polarizing direction. The light beam oriented in the polarizing direction through the combiner CB is collected through a condenser lens CL and illuminates a liquid crystal panel LCD.