Heat assisted magnetic recording with patterned FePt recording media using a lollipop near field transducer

In heat-assisted magnetic recording, optical energy is transferred to a small optical spot on the recording media using a near field transducer. In this study, a scattered field finite difference time domain simulation is used to analyze the performance of a lollipop transducer in heat assisted magnetic recording on both a patterned FePt media and a continuous thin film. To represent wear, sharp corners of the peg are approximated with curved ones, which are found to narrow the track width without excessive loss of intensity. Compared with continuous media, the patterned media exhibits higher energy efficiency and a better concentrated optical beam spot. This effect is due to the near field effects of patterned media on the performance of the transducer. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.