Effectiveness of a pulsed laser in heat-assisted magnetic recording

Recently, much effort has been directed towards increasing the areal density of heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). Here, we use our HAMR recording simulation that employs renormalized media parameters to examine the potential use of a pulsed laser instead of a continuous laser. Proper tuning of the synchronization between magnetic and laser pulses yields improved thermal gradients and comparable (or improved) recording performance relative to a continuous laser. Importantly, it also produces less average heat in the media, which is expected to improve near field transducer lifetime. Results also show that the optimized pulsed laser reduces adjacent track erasure relative to a continuous laser, which is important for non-shingled recording.