Patent ID: 7573801

Claim:
An optical pickup which records information on a recording medium and/or reproduces information from a recording medium by irradiating the recording medium with light which recording medium has a plurality of recording layers for recording information, the optical pickup comprising: a light source for emitting light; an objective lens for focusing the light emitted from the light source on one recording layer of the recording medium, the objective lens being disposed so as to be displaceable in a direction perpendicular to an optical axis of the emitted light within a movable range including a neutral position where the optical axis of the objective lens and the optical axis of the emitted light from the light source are on the same axis, and to change a focused position of the emitted light with respect to the recording medium by displacement in the direction perpendicular to the optical axis of the emitted light; a light receiving unit having a plurality of light receiving elements for receiving light reflected by the recording medium; and a light splitting unit that is provided between the light receiving unit and the objective lens and has a plurality of splitting sections for splitting the reflected light from the recording medium into a plurality of light components, the light splitting unit having a splitting section for tracking which splits light used for obtaining track position information as information on a focused position of emitted light with respect to the recording medium in a direction perpendicular to the optical axis of the emitted light, wherein the splitting section for tracking is formed in a region excluding a region interposed between a first virtual straight line and a second virtual straight line, in which the first virtual straight line is drawn on the light splitting unit in parallel to a radial direction of the recording medium, and passes through the optical axis of reflected light entering the light splitting unit in a state where the objective lens is in the neutral position, and the second virtual straight line is drawn on the light splitting unit in parallel to the first virtual straight line, while being spaced at a predetermined distance from the first virtual straight line.