Patent ID: 7586827

Claim:
An optical pickup apparatus comprising: a first semiconductor laser source which emits a first laser beam in a wavelength band of 405 nm having an elliptic light intensity distribution; a second semiconductor laser source which emits a second laser beam in a wavelength band of 650 nm; a beam shaping element which shapes the light intensity distribution of the first laser beam emitted from the first semiconductor laser source; a light path combiner which combines a light path of the first laser beam shaped by the beam shaping element and a light path of the second laser beam emitted from the second semiconductor laser source; a polarizing beam splitter having a polarized light separation film in contact with the air, the polarizing beam splitter reflecting the first and second laser beams having a combined light path combined by the light path combiner on the polarized light separation film; an objective lens which focuses the first and second laser beams reflected on the polarized light separation film, onto an optical information recording medium; an optical filter which satisfies a following condition with regard to a part of a s-polarized light component of the first and second laser beams transmitted through the polarizing beam splitter, TS655<TS405 where TS 405 represents a transmittance (%) of the s-polarized light component with a wavelength of 405 nm, and TS 655 represents a transmittance (%) of the s-polarized light component with a wavelength of 655 nm; and a detector which detects an intensity of the first and second laser beams transmitted through the optical filter.