US 2002/0159150 A1Published application

Wide-angle collimating optical device

AssigneeRaytheon Company

InventorsWilliam B. King, Chungte W. Chen, Ronald G. Hegg, John E. Gunther

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Abstract

A collimating optical device utilizes a reflective beamsplitter in the form of a linear polarizing beamsplitter to achieve a wide field of view. One form of the wide-angle collimating optical device includes, in order from an image source, a first absorptive linear polarizer; a first quarter-wave plate; an optical doublet including a plano-concave singlet, a plano-convex singlet whose convex surface has the same curvature as the curvature of the concave surface, and a first reflective beamsplitter joining the concave surface of the plano-concave singlet to the convex surface of the plano-convex singlet; a second quarter-wave plate; and a second reflective beamsplitter. One of the reflective beamsplitters is a linear polarizing beamsplitter, most preferably a wire grid polarizer.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A wide-angle collimating optical device, comprising:

a first absorptive linear polarizer having a front face and a back face;
a first quarter-wave plate having a front face in facing relation to the back face of the first absorptive linear polarizer, and a back face;
an optical doublet having a front face in facing relation to the back face of the first quarter-wave plate, and a back face, the optical doublet comprising
a plano-concave singlet having a planar face which forms the front face of the optical doublet and a concave surface having a curvature thereto,
a plano-convex singlet having a planar face which forms the back face of the optical doublet and a convex surface with the same curvature as the curvature of the concave surface, and
a first reflective beamsplitter joining the concave surface of the plano-concave singlet to the convex surface of the plano-convex singlet;
a second reflective beamsplitter having a front face and a back face, wherein
exactly one of the first reflective beamsplitter and the second reflective beamsplitter is a linear polarizing beamsplitter, and
neither the first reflective beamsplitter nor the second reflective beamsplitter is a cholesteric liquid crystal;
and
a second quarter-wave plate having a front face and a back face, wherein the front face of the second quarter-wave plate is in facing relation to the back face of the optical doublet and the back face of the second quarter-wave plate is in facing relation to the front face of the second reflective beamsplitter.

8 more elements

A wide-angle collimating optical device, comprising:

a first absorptive linear polarizer having a front face and a back face;
a first quarter-wave plate having a front face in facing relation to the back face of the first absorptive linear polarizer, and a back face;
an optical doublet having a front face in facing relation to the back face of the first quarter-wave plate, and a back face, the optical doublet comprising
a plano-concave singlet having a planar face which forms the front face of the optical doublet and a concave surface having a curvature thereto,
a plano-convex singlet having a planar face which forms the back face of the optical doublet and a convex surface having the same curvature as the curvature of the concave surface, and
a first reflective beamsplitter joining the concave surface of the plano-concave singlet to the convex surface of the plano-convex singlet;
a second quarter-wave plate having a front face in facing relation to the back face of the optical doublet and a back face;
and
a second reflective beamsplitter having a front face in facing relation to the back face of the second quarter-wave plate, and a back face, wherein the second reflective beamsplitter is a linear polarizing beamsplitter.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.