Patent ID: 6604827
Filing Date: 2003-08-12
Classification: G02B

Abstract:
An arc lamp illuminator for a projection system comprising:an arc lamp comprising an envelope enclosing an elongated arc having an axis lying in a lateral plane; at least one projection lens for projecting an image of the arc onto an image plane, the image plane oriented parallel to the arc image axis; at least one polarization conversion system comprising at least two compound prisms, each compound prism including an internal directional polarizer for splitting the projected arc image into primary and secondary arc images split laterally along the axis in the image plane to result in an elongated illumination beam which is elongated along the arc axis for a distance greater than the length of the original arc image, and for converting the primary and secondary arc images into polarized arc images having first and second polarization senses, respectively; and a rotator device for converting the polarization sense of either the primary or secondary arc image to correspond to the polarization sense of the other arc image.