Patent ID: 7859610

Claim:
A planar lighting device, comprising: a laser light source that emits a linearly-polarized laser beam; an optical member that parallelizes the laser beam and emits the parallelized laser beam; and a first plate-shaped light guide that has a first major surface, receives the parallelized laser beam from an end face portion and emits at least a part of the laser beam from said first major surface, wherein: the parallelized laser beam emitted from said optical member enters said first plate-shaped light guide through said end face portion such that a propagation direction of the parallelized laser beam is substantially parallel to surfaces other than a surface of said end face portion and a surface opposed to said surface of said end face portion, the surfaces constituting said first plate-shaped light guide; and said first light guide includes an optical element that receives the linearly-polarized parallelized laser beam propagating through said first light guide and emits at least a part of the parallelized laser beam in a direction substantially vertical to the first major surface.