Patent ID: 7656771

Claim:
An optical pickup which radiate a light beam onto an optical disc provided with a first and a second recording layer and receives the light beam reflected from the optical disc, said optical pickup comprising: a laser diode; an objective lens for focusing a light beam emitted by the laser diode on the optical disc; a detector for detecting the reflected light beam reflected from the optical disc; and an orthogonal polarization region forming component which forms an orthogonal polarization region, in which respective directions of polarization of a first light beam focused on and reflected by the first recording layer in the optical disc and a second light beam having a substantially identical wavelength as the first beam and reflected by the second recording layer before or after the first light beam is focused on the first recording layer are perpendicular to each other at the same time, in a region, in which the first and the second light beam overlap each other, on a light-receiving surface of the detector, wherein the orthogonal polarization region forming component is disposed in an optical path between the optical disc and the detector.