CROSS-TRACK CHARACTERISTICS OF SHIELDED MR HEADS

A three-dimensional micromagnetic model of the cross-track response of shielded magnetoresistive heads is presented in order to assess MR he ad performance in high track density recording applications. Both the down-track output pulse-width and the off-track output asymmetry decre ase as the shield-to-shield separation decreases. For the same biasing level, the off-track asymmetry increases with the stripe height Prope r initialization is found to be crucial to the head response profile. If the horizontal magnetization components of the MR and the adjacent layer are not in an anti-parallel state, larger off-track asymmetry oc curs. For improperly initialized heads, side-reading noise arises from local reversal of edge magnetizations in the un-pinned layer, which c ould be reduced by the presence of ideal shields.