In an optical pickup method and device of the present invention, a grating unit separates a light beam, emitted by a light source, into a 0th order diffracted beam and 1st order diffracted beams. An objective lens focuses the diffracted beams, sent from the grating unit, onto a recording surface of an optical recording medium through a transparent substrate of the medium, so that a main spot is formed on the recording surface by the 0th order diffracted beam and sub-spots, interposing the main spot therebetween, are formed on the recording surface by the 1st order diffracted beams. A reflection beam detector receives reflection beams from the main spot and the sub-spots of the medium to generate detection signals from the received reflection beams. A control unit changes a pattern of the beams incident to the objective lens to correct a spherical aberration due to a deviation of a thickness of the substrate of the medium, and moves the grating unit relative to the light source to cancel shifting of sub-spot positions on the recording surface due to the spherical aberration correction, in order to generate a proper tracking error signal.
Optical pickup method, optical pickup device, and optical information processing apparatus adapted with spherical aberration correction for sub-spot tracking control