Uniform Light Delivery Systems

The advent of high brightness instant start metal halide light sources and new low loss, low cost tight pipes makes high efficiency distributed lighting systems for automotive applications possible. In principle one or two such sources in combination with the appropriate light guides and beam forming optics can provide all of a vehicle's lighting functions. A fundamental problem has been uniformly feeding just a few small sized light guides from a single source in a low loss and reproducible manner. This paper describes collection optics that provide the required uniform light delivery while maintaining the high lumen density needed for technologically demanding systems such as head lamps.