Patent ID: 8861057

Claim:
A speckle-reduced laser illumination device comprising: at least one laser light source; a flat substrate; at least one planar ridge waveguide that has a plane and a longitudinal direction and is formed into an arbitrary configuration that is supported on the flat substrate and is coupled to the at least one laser light source for transmitting the laser light from the laser light source to the at least one planar ridge waveguide that comprises a cladding and a core; and a plurality of light-emitting holograms formed on the at least one planar ridge waveguide and arranged in sequence one after another at a distance that is equal to or exceeds the coherence length; each hologram comprising a plurality of light-emitting holographic elements that have a predetermined organization defined by the shape of a given light spot which is to be formed by light beams emitted from said plurality of holograms in a space at a distance from the at least one planar ridge waveguide, wherein at least one planar ridge waveguide comprises a cladding and a core and wherein holographic elements comprise linear grooves and linear projections formed in the core, said linear projections having a projection direction at an angle α relative to the longitudinal direction of the planar ridge waveguide for defining a side-beam tilt angle φ of inclination of light beams emitted from the respective holograms relative to the plane of the at least one ridge waveguide, wherein for a given α, the side beam tilt angle φ is given by the following relation: sin φ=n tan α, where n is the effective index of refraction in the ridge waveguide.