Yukihiro Abiko

Optical pickup adjustment system using a passive alignment method

The optical pickup of a magneto-optical drive is constructed of millimeter-size optical components, including a laser diode (LD), a collimating lens (CL), a polarizing beam splitter, some kinds of prisms, and photo detectors (PD). Each component must be assembled with micrometer-order accuracy. In particular, the astigmatism, which is adjusted by changing the position of the CL, must be within 0.65 micrometers in the optical axis direction. To enable the CL position to be adjusted quantitatively, we developed an adjustment method that uses passive alignment. We estimated the astigmatism by analyzing an image of the LD, which is acquired through the CL by illuminating the LD with the polarized light. We developed an optical-pickup adjustment system using the proposed method and tested its effectiveness experimentally. The results showed that this system can be used to adjust the accuracy to within 0.65 micrometers. Because the image of the LD and the PD are acquired clearly by this system, it should be useful for not only adjusting the optical pickup but also for visually inspecting the LD and PD.