title: Grazing-incidence optical magnetic recording with super-resolution.
abstract: Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is often considered the next major step in the storage industry: it is predicted to increase the storage capacity, the read/write speed and the data lifetime of future hard disk drives. However, despite more than a decade of development work, the reliability is still a prime concern. Featuring an inherently fragile surface-plasmon resonator as a highly localized heat source, as part of a near-field transducer (NFT), the current industry concepts still fail to deliver drives with sufficient lifetime. This study presents a method to aid conventional NFT-designs by additional grazing-incidence laser illumination, which may open an alternative route to high-durability HAMR. Magnetic switching is demonstrated on consumer-grade CoCrPt perpendicular magnetic recording media using a green and a near-infrared diode laser. Sub-500 nm magnetic features are written in the absence of a NFT in a moderate bias field of only μ0H= 0.3 T with individual laser pulses of 40 mW power and 50 ns duration with a laser spot size of 3 μm (short axis) at the sample surface - six times larger than the magnetic features. Herein, the presence of a nanoscopic object, i.e., the tip of an atomic force microscope in the focus of the laser at the sample surface, has no impact on the recorded magnetic features - thus suggesting full compatibility with NFT-HAMR.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Gunther
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Scheunert
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Research Support, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Sidney R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Würzburg, 97070 Würzburg, Germany.
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kullock
authors.affiliation: Centre for Nanostructured Media, School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK.
authors.forename: Ryan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: McCarron
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Research Support, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Katya
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rechev
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Research Support, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Ifat
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kaplan-Ashiri
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Research Support, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Ora
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bitton
authors.affiliation: Centre for Nanostructured Media, School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dawson
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Würzburg, 97070 Würzburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Bert
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hecht
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Oron
keywords: laser absorption; laser heating; thermally assisted magnetic recording