Patent ID: 7866869

Claim:
A flat panel display, comprising: a backlight including a plurality of lasing elements of at least two primary colors arranged in a plurality of laser assemblies, wherein: the backlight comprises a light guide for substantially distributing light output by the plurality of laser assemblies across the flat panel display, the plurality of laser assemblies are positioned about an exterior edge of the light guide, the plurality of lasing elements of at least one of the three primary colors are selected such that each lasing element emits a laser beam with a center wavelength λ 0i and a spectral bandwidth Δλ i , the center wavelength of at least one of the lasing elements is wavelength-shifted with respect to the center wavelength of at least one other lasing element, and said laser beams, when combined, have an ensemble spectrum Λ with an overlap parameter γ= Δλ i / S i with Δλ i being a mean spectral bandwidth of the lasing elements and S i being a mean wavelength shift between the center wavelengths λ 0i of the at least one and the at least one other lasing elements, with Δλ i and S i selected such that γ≧1; and an array of light modulators arranged across the flat panel display for modulating light emitted by the backlight.