Hitachi Media Electronics Co., Ltd.

Eriko Tatsu

Shigeharu Kimura

Tomoto Kawamura

Kazuyoshi Yamazaki

Tatsuro Ide

An optical pickup includes a light source, an optical system for irradiating a recording medium including a plurality of recording layers with light from the light source, a diffraction optical element that divides light reflected from the recording medium into a plurality of optical fluxes and diffracts the fluxes, and an optical detector receiving the optical flux diffracted by the diffraction optical element. The optical detector includes a light receiving element detecting a focus error signal, wherein a longitudinal direction of the light receiving element is arranged to coincide with a circumferential direction of the recording medium, or arranged to be inclined to a circumferential or radial direction.

Optical pickup and optical information recording and reproducing apparatus

An optical pick-up which permits the relative position of a diffracting optical element and a photodetector to be adjusted by feedback control with signals which are generated when more than one kind of diffracted light differing in order is received, the diffracted light occurring as the reflected light from the optical disc is divided and diffracted by the diffracting optical element having multiple regions. The photodetector which detects the light beam passing through the central region of the diffracting optical element and generates RF signals is juxtaposed with sub-photodetectors, so that they receive reflected stray light from out-of-focus layers and perform computation to calculate the reflected stray light component which the RF signal detector receives, thereby detecting only the component of signals of the reflected light from a target layer.

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Kokubunji, Japan

Eriko Tatsu