Patent 7876648 was granted and assigned to Sanyo on January, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An optical element is disposed on an optical path between a beam branching element and a photodetector. The optical element is disposed at a focal position of a stray light beam reflected by a recording layer except a target recording layer, and shields or attenuates the light beam in a region where the stray light beam converges.