An optical flying head for a near-field recording system

摘要

We report a novel optical head based on the combination of a solid immersion lens (SIL) and fiber optics with a flying slider for a practical near-field recording system. The configurations proposed here, are capable of near-field recording using magneto-optical (MO) detection and phase-change (PC) detection. 50nm of the flying height of the optical slider was obtained at a linear velocity of l0m/s. The effective numerical aperture (NA) of the SIL itself was 1.24 and the rms value of the wavefront aberration of the SIL was 0.0367λ. This rms value can realize an accurate readout at a practical level. Further, the carrier to noise ratio (CNR) for the mark length of 0.2μm on a spin stand was about 41 dB. This result indicates that a SIL can be combined with a flying slider for near-field recording.