Micromagnetic study of recording process on longitudinal thin-film media

Through a micromagnetic computer simulation, we have examined the configura tion of magnetic transitions in thin-film recording media. We found that th e perpendicular component Hz of head field significantly affects the bendin g of the magnetization transition. Specifically, the bending is dominated b y the ratio between the in-plane component of the head field Hxy and the he ad-field angle, which is given by phi=atan(Hz/Hxy). This indicates that the reduction of Hz will help enable a straight magnetization transition and h igher areal density.