Thermal stability of recorded information at high densities

Simulations have been carried out with the purpose of identifying the thermal stability limits on data storage density in longitudinal recording on thin film media. The simulations use a combination of molecular dynamics based upon the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation of motion and a Monte Carlo method for dealing with magnetic viscosity. Based upon the limits on media coercivity imposed by available heads and SNR considerations, but assuming that sufficient head resolution can be achieved, an upper bound of about 36 Gbit/in./sup 2/ is projected.