Thermal stability in longitudinal thin film media

Thermal stability in longitudinal thin film media was studied using a Monte-Carlo simulation. As recording densities increase, the signal decay ratios increase. The effect of the density is, however, very small. Between two materials with identified thermal stability factors/kT (where, K/sub u/ is the anisotropy constant, V is the volume of a grain, k is Boltzmann's constant, T is the temperature, and <> means an average value), the medium with smaller grains was found to be more stable against thermal fluctuations. These phenomena are related to the magnetic fields that are applied to grains in the media, which make the magnetization stable against thermal fluctuation.