Optical pickup

An optical pickup that reads out information from an optical recording medium, comprising:

• two light emitting elements operable to emit optical beams respectively;
• a diffraction grating operable to diffract each optical beam to a zero order diffracted beam and plus and minus first order diffracted beams;
• a collimator lens operable to collimate the diffracted beams;
• an objective lens operable to focus the collimated beams on a recording surface of the optical recording medium;
• and
• a holographic optical element operable to diffract the beams reflected from the recording surface, wherein
• the holographic optical element has four diffraction regions, which are separated by two straight lines intersecting at right angles, each diffraction region having a different diffraction angle, and
• the holographic optical element is disposed so that principal rays of the zero order diffracted beams, which are diffracted by the diffraction grating and reflected from the recording surface, pass through an intersection point of the two straight lines.