Patent 7813252 was granted and assigned to Hoya on October, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
There is provided an optical pick-up including first to third light sources respectively emitting first to third light beams, a first coupling lens, and an objective lens formed to converge each of the first, second and third light beams onto the first, second and third optical discs, respectively. The objective lens has a step structure including a plurality of concentrically formed refractive surface zones divided by steps, the step structure having a function of giving, at each step, an optical path length difference of approximately 2λ1 to the first light beam. The first coupling lens causes the first light beam to be incident on the objective lens as a converging beam. The objective lens is positioned to satisfy a condition:−0.35<f2×M2−f1×M1<−0.07 (1).