According to an embodiment, a recording/reproducing apparatus includes a diffraction grating and a light-receiving element. The diffraction grating divides return light from the guide layer in accordance with areas. The areas include a first area and a second area that does not overlap the first area. The light-receiving element includes (i) a first detecting cell group which receives a zero-order beam to which astigmatism is imparted, (ii) a second detecting cell group which receives at least one of a positive and negative first-order beam, which passes the first area and made astigmatic, and (iii) a third detecting cell group which receives at least one of a positive and negative first-order beam, which passes the second area and made astigmatic.

A reproducing device (100) includes (i) an optical pickup (6) for irradiating, with reproduction light, an optical disk (1) which is a super-resolution medium, (ii) an RF signal processing circuit (9) for converting, into a reproduction signal, light which reflected off optical disk (1), (iii) an i-MLSE detecting section (141) for evaluating quality of the reproduction signal, and (iv) a spherical aberration correcting section (142) for correcting a spherical aberration by using a result of evaluation of the quality of the reproduction signal.

An optical disc apparatus is disclosed. The optical disc apparatus includes: a driver configured to rotate an optical disc having a recording surface for data; an optical pick-up configured to emit a light beam to the optical disc rotated by the driver; and at least one processor configured to operate the optical pick-up to focus the light beam emitted from the pick-up unit to perform one of recording and reproducing the data on the recording surface and track curvature of the recording surface within a preset allowable range, and to process the light beam reflected from the recording surface, the at least one the processor further configured to increase the allowable range if it is determined that the focus of the light beam cannot track the curvature of the recording surface in a section of the recording surface.