We introduce a new polarization conversion system (PCS) based on a liquid-crystal polarization grating (PG) and louvered wave plate. A simple arrangement of these elements laminated between two microlens arrays results in a compact and monolithic element, with the ability to nearly completely convert unpolarized input into linearly polarized output across most of the visible bandwidth. In our first prototypes, this PG-PCS approach manifests nearly 90% conversion efficiency of unpolarized to polarized for $\pm 11°$ input light divergence, leading to an energy efficient picoprojector that presents high efficacy ($12\mathrm{lm}/\mathrm{W}$) with good color uniformity.

© 2012 Optical Society of America

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