Patent ID: 7197003

Claim:
An optical element comprising: a ¼ wave plate part providing a phase difference of a ¼ wavelength to each of light beams of a plurality of specific wavelengths; a total reflection part reflecting all of the light beams of the specific wavelengths; wherein a light beam incident on the optical element is affected twice by said ¼ wave plate part before being emitted from the optical element by being first affected by said ¼ wave plate part, then reflected from said total reflection part, and again incident on said ¼ wave plate part to be affected thereby; and said ¼ wave plate part has a multilayer organic film structure formed to be capable of providing the phase difference of the ¼ wavelength to each of the light beams of the specific wavelengths by selecting and layering one over another a plurality of organic films of different wavelength dispersion characteristics so that wavelength dispersion of each of the organic films is compensated for, the wavelength dispersion characteristics each representing wavelength dependency of a phase difference.