Patent ID: 7965610

Claim:
An optical pickup device comprising: a laser light source; an irradiated light focusing optical system for focusing laser light from the laser light source on a recording layer of a multi-layer optical information storage medium; and a detection optical system for detecting, among reflected light, light reflected from the recording layer of the multi-layer optical information storage medium, wherein the detection optical system includes: a splitting optical system for splitting the reflected light from the recording layer into parallel light bundles respectively located on two sides of an optical axis so that the light bundles thus split do not pass through the optical axis; a reflected light focusing lens for focusing the reflected light thus split by the splitting optical system; a reflection surface provided at a minimum spot position of the reflected light from the recording layer among the reflected light focused by the reflected light focusing lens; an attenuation element provided between the reflected light focusing lens and the reflection surface in such a way as to include the optical axis and used for attenuating the quantity of reflected light from an adjacent layer other than the recording layer; and a photodetector for detecting the reflected light, and the reflected light reflected by the reflection surface is detected on the photodetector.