Lighting device for headlights with a phase modulator

1. A lighting device arranged to produce a controllable light beam for illuminating a scene, the controllable light beam having an angle of illumination, the device comprising:

an addressable spatial light modulator arranged to provide a selectable phase delay distribution to a beam of incident light;

Fourier optics arranged to receive phase-modulated light in a first diffraction order and in one or more higher diffraction orders from the spatial light modulator and form a light distribution; and

projection optics arranged to project the light distribution to form a pattern of illumination as said controllable light beam,

wherein the spatial light modulator is a pixelated spatial light modulator and the device is arranged to widen the angle of illumination by using the first diffraction order and the one or more higher diffraction orders of the spatial light modulator.

2. The lighting device of claim 1 , wherein the projection optics magnify the pattern of illumination.

3. The lighting device of claim 1 , wherein the phase delay distribution comprises a representation of the pattern of illumination in the Fourier domain.

4. The lighting device of claim 1 , wherein the pattern of illumination is in the spatial domain.

5. The lighting device of claim 1 , wherein the Fourier optic is arranged to perform a time-space transformation.

6. The lighting device of claim 1 , wherein the Fourier optic is a Fourier lens.

7. The lighting device of claim 6 , wherein the Fourier lens has a short focal length.

8. The lighting device of claim 1 , wherein the spatial modulator is reflective.

9. The lighting device of claim 1 , wherein the spatial light modulator is a liquid crystal on silicon device.

10. The lighting device of claim 1 , further comprising a diffuser on the side of the device to further widen the angle of illumination.

11. The lighting device of claim 1 , wherein the device is a headlamp.

12. A method of illuminating a scene, the method comprising:

forming a variable set of phase delays on a pixelated spatial light modulator;

illuminating the spatial light modulator to provide an exit beam, the exit beam comprising light in a first diffraction order of the spatial light modulator and light in one or more higher diffraction orders of the spatial light modulator;

applying the exit beam comprising the light in the first diffraction order and the light in the one or more higher diffraction orders to Fourier optics to form an image; and

projecting the image to provide a scene-illuminating beam having an angle of illumination widened by the first diffraction order and the one or more higher diffraction orders of the spatial light modulator.

13. The method of claim 12 , further comprising selecting the set of phase delays to steer the scene illuminating beam.

14. The method of claim 12 , further comprising changing the set of phase delays to change the beam shape.

15. The method of claim 12 , further comprising reading a pre-calculated set of phase delays from a memory and using the pre-calculated set of phase delays as the variable set of phase delays on the pixelated spatial light modulator.

16. The method of claim 12 , wherein the step of illuminating the spatial light modulator to provide an exit beam comprises illuminating the spatial light modulator with infra-red light.

17. The method of claim 12 , wherein the step of illuminating the spatial light modulator to provide an exit beam comprising illuminating the spatial light modulator with polychromatic light.

18. The method of claim 12 , further comprising dynamically changing the colour temperature of the scene-illuminating beam.