Wataru ODAJIMA, Fumihiro TAWA, and Shin-ya HASEGAWA

Storage & Intelligent Systems Laboratories, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., 10-1 Morinosato-Wakamiya, Atsugi, Kanagawa 243-0197, Japan

(Received January 31, 2007; Accepted April 25, 2007)

“Laser-assisted magnetic recording”, in which a recording media is heated by a laser beam while writing data, is attracting attention as a technology that enables a recording density of 1 Tb/in.². There exists another technology for media in which the recording layer is constructed with many small projections that enable high magnetic coercivity. This is called “patterned media”. For developing hard disk drives using these methods, we developed a simulator that analyzes the optical intensity distribution from the optical head for laser-assisted recording and the temperature profile on the patterned media. The simulator calculates the optical model using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The thermal analysis of the three-dimensional model allows fast calculations using the alternating direction implicit (ADI) method. The heat source distribution data for thermal analysis is calculated in order to use the results of optical analysis. The optical and thermal analyses of the laser-assisted recording model were investigated with the simulator.

Key words: FDTD method, ADI method, optical simulation, thermal analysis, laser-assisted magnetic recording, hard disk drives