Patent ID: 7016093

Claim:
An optical scanning apparatus comprising: a light deflecting member for deflecting and scanning a light beam emitted from a light source; and a scanning optical element which scans and images the light beam that is deflected and scanned by the light deflecting member, onto a medium to be scanned, and the optical scanning apparatus satisfies following equation: | d ε(θ)/ dθ|≦ 5.0×10 /Pθo where θ is an angle formed by the light beam that is deflected and scanned by the light deflecting member and an optical axis of the scanning optical element, ε(θ) is an amount of positional deviation due to deviation from speed uniformity of the light beam on the medium to be scanned, P is a spatial scan density on the medium to be scanned, and θo is a maximum of an absolute value of the angle θ.