Patent ID: 7230902

Claim:
An optical pickup device including a condenser lens composed of a solid immersion lens having a spherical surface portion and a flat surface portion parallel to the surface of an optical recording medium, said condenser lens having a numerical aperture greater than 1, a bundle of rays in a predetermined polarized state being irradiated on said optical recording medium from a light source through said condenser lens and a polarized state component perpendicular to the polarized state of reflected light obtained when a distance between the surface of said optical recording medium and the flat surface portion of said solid immersion lens is zero is detected from reflected light from said optical recording medium to obtain a signal corresponding to the distance between the surface of said optical recording medium and the flat surface portion of said solid immersion lens, comprising: a beam splitter for reflecting both of a p-polarized light component and an s-polarized light component in reflected lights from said optical recording medium; dividing means for dividing incident light into the p-polarized light component and the s-polarized light component reflected by said beam splitter; and photo-detecting means for separately detecting the p-polarized light component and the s-polarized light component separated by said dividing means.