Area light source apparatus and liquid crystal display apparatus assembly

An area light source apparatus for illuminating a liquid crystal display apparatus of the transmission type, which has a display area formed from a plurality of pixels arrayed in a two-dimensional matrix, from the back, comprising:

• a plurality of light emitting element assemblies each provided as a light source and each including a light emitting element and a lens through which light emitted from said light emitting element passes;
• and
• a plurality of dummy lenses disposed in the proximity of each of said light emitting element assemblies and configured same as the lenses of said light emitting element assemblies,
• wherein,
• in the proximity of any of said light emitting element assemblies, other ones of said light emitting element assemblies are disposed,
• one of said light emitting element assemblies is disposed in a region in which light emitted from the lens of another one of said light emitting element assemblies is introduced directly into the light emitting element assembly,
• a light emitting element assembly group is composed of a plurality of ones of said light emitting element assemblies which are positioned at the vertices of one or a plurality of imaginary squares, and
• a plurality of ones of said dummy lenses are disposed on the outer side of the light emitting element assembly group in such a manner as to be positioned at the vertices of imaginary squares of the same shape as that of the imaginary square.