Hitachi, Ltd.

Other

Hitachi Media Electronics Co., Ltd.

Nobuo Imada

Hidenori Shinohara

Yukio Fukui

Toshio Sugiyama

Shinji Fujita

Yasuyuki Sugi

Masayuki Inoue

Shigeru Nakamura

Tohru Sasaki

Akira Arimoto

Kunikazu Ohnishi

Takeshi Nakao

A dichroic mirror of a polarized beam splitter is installed between a mirror and an objective lens as a beam synthesize/split means, in an optical system corresponding to a second dick and an optical system corresponding to a first disk arranged so as to form a two-layer structure. The dimension of the optical head in the width, length, and thickness directions are designed moderately.

Compact optical head including two light emitters having parallel optical axes

The dichroic mirror or a polarized beam splitter is installed between a mirror and an objective lens as a beam synthesize/split means, in an optical system corresponding to a second disk and an optical system corresponding to a first disk arranged so as to form a two-layer structure. The dimension of the optical head in the width, length, and thickness directions are designed moderately.

Compact optical head including two light emitters having parallel

The present invention comprises an arrangement with removable optical element having a predetermined focal distance in the light path between a light source and an objective lens, so as to insert said optical element into the light path between the light source and the objective lens for playing back or recording onto one type of thickness of disk plates, as well as to remove it therefrom for playing back or recording onto another type of thickness of disk plates. Alternatively, by retaining variably the distance between the light source and the collimator lens, the distance between the light source and the collimator lens along with the light path is variably changed according to the thickness of the disk plate being inserted. Then by determining the type of the disk inserted and accordingly selectably inserting/removing the optical element, only one objective lens may be used to conform to the disk plates having different thicknesses.

Optical disk apparatus and optical head thereof

A recording/reproducing optical head capable of causing a light spot on a photodetector for detecting a focusing error signal to stand still without being affected by variations in wavelength of light used, capable of adjusting a tracking error signal independently of the focusing error signal, and capable of utilizing light having an order of diffraction of -1 for the purpose of detecting a signal, in which a cylindrical lens for generating astigmatism and a diffraction grating made up of two regions different in the direction of diffraction or the angle of diffraction from each other are interposed between a beam splitter and a photodetector, a light beam diffracted from the diffraction grating and including the diffracted light of the zero-th order (that is, light which has passed through the diffraction grating without being deflected) is received by the photodetector, the diffracted light of the zero-th order is used for detecting a focusing error signal according to the astigmatism method, and diffracted light having an order of diffraction of +1 and diffracted light having an order of diffraction of -1 are used for detecting a tracking error signal.

Recording/reproducing optical head producing focusing error signal from

Growing community of inventors

Chigasaki, Japan

Nobuo Imada