MAGNETO-OPTICAL PICKUP

PURPOSE:To miniaturize a pickup without bending and separating the optical path of a return beam with respect to an irradiation beam. CONSTITUTION:The laser beam of straightline polarization outgoing from a laser 2 is reflected to foward to a magneto-optical disk 9 by the external reflection surface 5 of a polarizing separation prism 4. The laser beam is emitted on a disk 9 through an objective lens 8. The reflected beam from the disk 9 is diffracted by a diffraction beam generation element 6 and separated to the laser beam facing to the disk 9 in space. The diffracted beam is rotated nearly by 45 degree by a rotator 11 in the polarizing direction. After the beam is made incident on the incident surface 12 of the prism 4, it is separated to a transmission component and a reflection component by a joint surface 13. The transmission component is made incident on a PD 14 and the reflection component is made incident on the PD 15.