Asahi Kogaku Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Pentax Corporation

Other

Wataru Kubo

Suguru Takishima

Hiroshi Nishikawa

Koichi Maruyama

Hiroshi Yamamoto

Akihiro Tanaka

Masato Noguchi

Isao Okuda

Masahiko Sasaki

Koichiro Nishikawa

Toshiyuki Kase

Amit Jain

Makoto Iwaki

Hiroshi Kokado

Junichi Takeda

Ryoichi Nakanishi

Hisashi Konno

Hirotaka Fujii

Masami Ninomiya

Hiroshi Motohashi

There is provided an objective lens which has positive refractive power and has a single lens element having an incident surface from which the collimated beam enters and an exit surface from which the collimated beam emerges. Further, the incident surface and the exit surface are configured to be rotationally symmetrical aspherical surfaces. At least within an effective diameter of the single lens element, the incident surface and the exit surface are symmetrical with respect to a plane perpendicular to an optical axis of the single lens element and have the same shape.

Objective lens for optical recording/reproducing device

A single-element objective lens for an optical pick-up is configured to converge substantially parallel light rays incident thereon onto a data recording surface of an optical recording medium. The objective lens includes, a first surface, which is a light incident side surface, and a second surface, which is an optical recording medium side surface. The first surface is an aspherical surface having a positive power, and the second surface is an aspherical surface having positive or negative power. The objective lens is designed such that paraxial wavefront aberration is 0.07&lgr; rms or less when a decentering amount between the first and second surfaces is 2 &mgr;m or less so as to converge the incident light substantially to a diffraction limit. A numerical aperture of the objective lens is 0.8 or more.

Objective optical system for optical pick-up

An optical disc apparatus includes a fixed portion having a light source portion and a movable portion that holds an objective lens and moves along a radial direction of an optical disc. The fixed portion includes the light source portion for selectively emitting short and long wavelength laser beams, and a collimator lens for collimating the laser beams. The objective lens includes a positive refractive lens and a diffractive lens structure formed on a surface of the refractive lens. The diffractive lens structure has wavelength dependence such that spherical aberration varies in the undercorrected direction as wavelength of incident light increases. The objective lens converges the short wavelength laser beam of a predetermined diffraction order onto an informatlon layer of a thin cover type optical disc, and converges the long wavelength laser beam of the identical diffraction order onto an information layer of a thick cover type optical disc.

Optical disc apparatus

An optical head is provided with a beam splitting element which divides a beam reflected by a data recording surface of an optical disc into two beams with generating opposite defocus therebetween, and a pair of light receiving elements which receive the two beams divided by the beam splitting element, respectively, the pair of light receiving elements being arranged substantially on a same plane. A light receiving surface of each of the pair of light receiving elements is divided, by two lines extending in a direction corresponding to a tracking direction on the optical disc, into at least three light receiving areas. A focusing error signal is generated in accordance with outputs of the at least three light receiving areas.

Optical head with light receiving element surfaces divided into at least three light receiving areas

Disclosed is an optical system for an optical disk drive for reading/writing data from/in an optical disk. The optical system includes a light source emitting a parallel laser beam, a deflector having a rotatable mirror surface. The parallel laser beam emitted by the light source is incident on the mirror surface of the deflector and is deflected towards an objective lens system which faces the optical disk. A relay lens system is provided between the deflector and the objective lens system such that the mirror surface and a front principal plane of the objective lens system have a substantially conjugate relationship.

Optical system for optical disk drive

Disclosed is a rotation amount detecting system for detecting a rotation amount of a deflection mirror, which is rotatable about an rotation axis, employed in an optical disc drive. The rotation amount detecting system is provided with a light emitting system that emits a light beam to the deflection mirror. The light beam has a line-like cross section extending in a direction perpendicular to the rotation axis. Further, a detecting system is provided to receive the beam reflected by the deflection mirror and determines the rotation amount of the deflection mirror in accordance with the received beam.

Rotation amount detecting system of deflection mirror for optical disc drive

A photomagnetic head apparatus includes a beam splitter which splits a laser beam, reflected by concentric recording tracks of a rotating photomagnetic recording disc, into three bundles of rays. The three bundles of rays have different polarization directions in a plane which lies in a radial direction of the recording tracks. One of the three bundles of rays is used as a servo-signal light, and the remaining two bundles of rays are used as data signal lights. A defocusing diffraction element splits at least the servo-signal light into a least two bundles of rays in a direction corresponding to the tangential direction of the recording tracks, substantially perpendicular to the split direction of the beam splitter and which provides at least two split lights with a predetermined amount of positive or negative defocus in an optical axis direction. A pair of servo-signal light receiving elements receive the split beams of the servo-signal light produced by the defocusing diffraction element. A data light receiving element receives the data signal lights. The defocusing diffraction element is made of a non-circular element whose numerical aperture in the tangential direction of the recording tracks is smaller than the numerical aperture in the radial direction.

Photomagnetic head apparatus

An opto-magnetic head apparatus including a beam splitter for splitting laser light reflected from a photomagnetic recording medium into three bundles of light having different polarization directions in a specific plane. One of the three bundles of light is used as a servo-signal and the remaining two bundles of light are used as a data-signal. A diffracting element, which splits at least the bundle of light used as a servo signal into two bundles of light in a direction perpendicular to the direction in which the splitting of the laser light by the beam splitter occurs, provides a predetermined amount of positive or negative defocus to the bundles of light split by the diffracting element. The opto-magnetic head apparatus also includes a pair of servo-signal light receiving elements which receive the bundles of servo-signal light split by the diffracting element and which are located in a plane normal to the optical axis. Two data-signal light receiving elements, which receive the bundles of the data-signal light, are located in the same plane as the servo-signal light receiving elements.

Opto-magnetic head apparatus

An objective lens system used in an optical system of an optical disk device. The objective lens system includes at least one lens element and converges light emitted from a light source onto a reflecting layer of an optical disk. The lens element has an offense against the sine condition OSC, and the optical disk has a substrate thickness T and a refractive index n. A ray of light exits the lens element and intersects an optical axis of the lens element at an angle .alpha.. The values of OSC, .alpha., n and T satisfy the following relationship for light rays that are incident on the objective lens system at distances from the optical axis of the objective lens system which are least equal to a predetermined percentage of an effective height of an aperture of the objective lens: ##EQU1## Accordingly, a spherical aberration of the optical system is corrected. An offense against the sine condition of only the objective lens is substantially coincident with a spherical aberration of the objective lens such that a coma of only the objective lens is corrected.

Objective lens system of an optical disk device

An optical disk apparatus comprises an optical pickup having an optical pickup body carrying a laser and a photodetector responsive to light emitted from the laser and reflected by the optical disk for producing tracking error signals mounted on the optical pickup body for reciprocal movement in a tracking direction responsive to operation of an actuator, and supports an objective for focusing the beam on the disk. A position sensor produces position signals in response to displacement of the movable portion in the tracking direction. Finally a servo tracking circuit outputs driving signals to the actuator on the basis of tracking error signals produced either in response to tracking error signals produced from outputs of the photodetector and position signals produced from output signals of the position sensor, in response only to the latter. The optical disk apparatus having the foregoing construction eliminates direct-current offset included in tracking error signals, stabilizes driving of the objective, and reduces access time.

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Saitama-ken, Japan

Wataru Kubo