Transmission property analysis of optically-anisotropic dielectric multilayer for thinwide-viewing-angle reflective polarizer

We show that light leakage that occurs in reflective polarizers at large angles of incidence can be suppressed by using anisotropic dielectric multilayers with larger reflective indices in thickness direction and that the interference-included 2 × 2 Jones matrix method is useful for the investigation of the optical propagation properties of the dielectric multilayers. The thickness of the reflective polarizer can also be reduced by optimizing the distribution of the multilayers in the stack, whilst considering the visual sensitivity. These results indicate that it is possible to realize a high-quality liquid crystal display with wide viewing angles and high light utilization efficiency.