Patent ID: 7296897

Claim:
An apparatus for a projection display system, comprising: a light source configured to illuminate a spatial modulator with red, green, and blue light, the light source including: a first array of surface emitting semiconductor lasers adapted to generate a plurality of overlapping beams of red light in which individual surface emitting semiconductor lasers in the first array are substantially incoherent with respect to surface emitting semiconductor lasers of the same color; a second array of extended cavity surface emitting semiconductor lasers adapted to generate a plurality of overlapping beams of green light in which individual surface emitting semiconductor lasers in the second array are substantially incoherent with respect to surface emitting semiconductor lasers of the same color; and a third array of extended cavity surface emitting semiconductor lasers adapted to generate a plurality of overlapping beams of blue light in which individual surface emitting semiconductor lasers in the third array are substantially incoherent with respect to surface emitting semiconductor lasers of the same color; each of said arrays being configured into a plurality of sub-arrays in which each sub-array can be independently addressed; and a laser controller and associated drivers with a plurality of different driver phase delays configured to drive the sub-arrays of each array in a pulse mode at a common pulse rate but with different phases selected to increase the effective pulse rate of each color.