Inner drum exposure apparatus

An inner drum exposure apparatus, comprising:

• a support having an arcuate inner peripheral surface on which a recording material on which an image is record is held;
• a light source which emits circularly polarized light as a light beam;
• modulating means which modulates in accordance with image information of said image said light beam emitted from said light source;
• and
• scanning means which is rotatably driven, has a total internal reflection mirror plane, and scans said recording material held on said arcuate inner peripheral surface of said support with said light beam that is modulated in accordance with said image information by said modulating means and deflected by said total internal reflection mirror plane of said rotatably driven scanning means, wherein
• said image is record on said recording material by scanning said recording material with said modulated light beam using said scanning means,
• said scanning means further comprises an optical member having on its surface a polarizing beam splitter plane which is spaced apart from said total internal reflection mirror plane by a predetermined distance, and
• two beam spots respectively formed on said recording material by two parallel beams that were obtained by said polarizing beam splitter plane and said total internal reflection mirror plane are combined into a synthetic beam spot in which said two beam spots are disposed side by side in a sub scanning direction so as to overlap each other.