Abstract

The optical head is an important and major component for optical disk drives. For the read/write optical drives, expected to be generally available soon, the optical heads using conventional design often include some bulky optical lenses and prisms. The use of HOEs can greatly reduce the component counts, size, and weight of the optical head. We expect that these will improve the performance. We describe an optical head design using HOEs. The design uses two spherical plano-convex lenses and two HOEs. The two HOEs correct the spherical aberrations of the lenses, compensate wavelength shifts up to ±5 nm, and change the elliptical beam to a circular shape. Experiments have been performed to confirm the design concept. Techniques for making the HOEs and experimental results are described.

© 1988 Optical Society of America