Patent ID: 6895138

Claim:
A display unit comprising: a plurality of optical waveguides, disposed approximately in parallel to each other, for receiving light containing a specific polarized light component as incident light; one or two or more light emergence portions crossing said optical waveguides; and optical switches, disposed between said waveguides and said light emergence portions, for making part of said incident light selectively emergent from said optical waveguides to said light emergence portions provided outside said optical waveguides; wherein each of said optical switches has a light transmissive stacked structure including a function layer for selective emergence of said incident light; and letting Δn be a difference between a refractive index n 0 of said optical waveguide and a refractive index n 1 of an arbitrary layer forming part of said stacked structure, “d” be a thickness of said arbitrary layer, and λ be a wavelength of said incident light, the values of Δn, “d”, and λ satisfy a condition of 2.20×10 −3 ≦|Δn·d·λ −1 |≦3.03×10 −3 .