Patent ID: 7848207

Claim:
An optical pickup including first, second, and third light sources for respectively emitting first, second, and third light beams of wavelengths λ 1 , λ 2 , and λ 3 , which are related to one another by λ 1 <λ 2 <λ 3 , the optical pickup recording or reproducing information with respect to first, second, and third recording media respectively having light transmissive layers of different thicknesses, by focusing the first, second, and third light beams on respective information recording faces of the first, second, and third recording media using common focusing means, said optical pickup comprising: a diffraction optical element, provided in a common optical path between the first, second, and third light sources and an objective lens and including a diffracting face and a refracting face, for causing the first, second, and third light beams to diverge or converge according to the wavelengths of the first, second, and third light beams, and causing the first, second, and third light beams to diffract on the diffracting face so that the first light beam is incident on the focusing means as a first order diffracted ray and the second and third light beams are incident on the focusing means as first or lower order diffracted rays, the diffracting face of the diffraction optical element having a diffraction grating whose depth is set so that diffraction efficiency for one diffraction order is higher than that for other diffraction orders with respect to a diffracted ray of each of the first, second, and third light beams incident on the focusing means, and the diffraction optical element causes the first light beam to be incident on the focusing means as a first order diffracted ray, and causes the second and third light beams to be incident on the focusing means as a zeroth order diffracted ray, and the depth of the diffraction grating on the diffracting face of the diffraction optical element is set so that the diffraction optical element has highest diffraction efficiency for a first order diffracted ray for the first light beam, and a zeroth order diffracted ray for the second and third light beams.