Patent ID: 7012870

Claim:
An optical recording method for irradiating an optical recording medium having a recording layer on an optically transparent substrate with a laser beam to form a recording mark, comprising the steps of: defining contiguously, on said recording layer, a virtual recording cell having a given unit length in a displacement direction relative to that of said laser beam and having a given unit width in a direction orthogonal thereto, along said displacement direction, setting reference irradiating time of said virtual recording cell with said laser beam to five stages or more, irradiating with a laser beam of zero power or weak enough not to form a recording mark after irradiating with said laser beam for recording on a preceding virtual recording cell, and irradiating with a laser beam of zero power or weak enough not to form a recording mark before irradiating with a laser beam for recording on a neighboring subsequent virtual recording cell, and forming at least five types of recording marks having different sizes on said plurality of virtual recording cells to perform multi-level recording of information by modulating an optical reflectivity based on an area ratio to said virtual recording cell.