Physical Optics Corporation

Anatoly Vasiliev

Tomasz P Jannson

Abbas Hosseini

Stephen A Kupiec

Gajendra D Savant

Hyun-Sun Chung

Andrew A Kostrzewski

Jeffrey A Laine

Indra Tengara

Mike Rud

Jeongdal Kim

Michael Rud

A backlight assembly is disclosed having a light pipe and at least one light source located at an edge of the light pipe. The light pipe has a back surface and a front surface opposite the back surface. The light pipe also has one or more light directing, diffusing, turning, or brightness enhancing film layers adjacent the front surface. The light pipe also has an integral surface diffuser microstructure molded, embossed, or otherwise replicated in the front surface of the light pipe.

Backlight assembly with a light pipe having optical elements and an integral surface diffuser

Backlight assembly with a light pipe having an integral surface diffuser

A non-scattering light pipe includes a transition surface between a first side wall and an input surface and a second side wall and the input surface. The transition surface is arranged to substantially obscure the corner interfaces between the first and second side walls and the input surface such that in the corner formation any imperfections therein are not imaged into the output. Most preferably, the transition surface is optimized to provide a substantially uniform light intensity distribution. A light pipe in accordance with the preferred embodiments of the present invention is further arranged to couple to a linear light source, such as a cold cathode fluorescent light (CCFL). The light source is arranged such that dim areas, i.e., areas of the light source having non-uniform intensity, are not disposed adjacent the input surface.

Light pipe for a backlighting system

A fiber optic luminaire is arranged to couple light energy from a light source along its length. The fiber optic luminaire includes a plurality of light redirecting structures distributed along its length; the light redirecting structures are arranged to uniformly distribute by reflection light energy from the fiber optic luminaire. The light redirecting structures are preferably non-scattering structures, including structures such as microprisms, microfacets, microgrooves and micrometers. The fiber optic luminaire may be configured to a variety of shapes and to provide customized light distribution patterns.

Fiber optic luminaire

A method of rapid prototyping a lighting system which is at least one of folded path and multifaceted includes determining output power of the lighting system by calculating phase space density. A method of rapid prototyping a lighting system comprises ray tracing the lighting system, determining photometric quantities which describe the lighting system based on the ray tracing step, and providing a stereoscopic three-dimensional rendering of the lighting system based on the determining step. The three-dimensional renderings reveal any hidden pseudo-image artifacts in a lighting system before the lighting system is actually fabricated. A computer system for rapid prototyping a lighting system comprises a plurality of slave processors networked to a host processor. The slave processor and the master processor cooperate to ray trace the lighting system, and the slave processors perform homogeneous independent tasks. The computer architecture allows the homogeneous independent tasks to be distributed to the plurality of slave computers, so that the overall amount of time required to perform the tasks is drastically reduced. The amount of computational time required to generate useful information about a prototype lighting system is thereby reduced.

Method of rapid prototyping for multifaceted and/or folded path lighting

Growing community of inventors

Torrance, CA, United States of America

Anatoly Vasiliev