Patent ID: 7120095

Claim:
An apparatus to generate a seek direction detecting signal for an optical pickup, comprising: a light dividing unit to divide an incident light beam into a main beam and a sub-beam to form on an optical disk a main beam spot and a sub-beam spot having an optical aberration, the main beam and the sub-beam being focused in a track direction of the optical disk, the light dividing unit being disposed so that a direction of the optical aberration is formed on the optical disk in a radial direction of the optical disk; an optical detector comprising a first optical detector having light receiving portions to receive the main beam reflected from the optical disk, and to convert portions of the reflected main beam into independent first electrical signals, and a second optical detector to receive the sub-beam reflected from the optical disk, and to convert portions of the received sub-beam into independent second electrical signals; and a signal processing portion to generate the seek direction detecting signal from a generated second signal and a generated track error signal, the signal processing portion comprising: a first signal processing portion to detect the track error signal from the first electrical signals, and a second signal processing portion to generate the second signal from the second electrical signals.