Magneto-optical recording on patterned substrates

Patterning of glass or plastic substrates in the form of shallow square patches is a promising method of increasing the storage density for magneto-optical disks. The sidewalls of the patches pin the reverse-magnetized domains that develop in these samples. Confinement of domains within the patch boundaries during thermomagnetic recording has also been demonstrated. We have measured polarization conversion of the incident light on the sidewalls of the patches; a method to reduce the amount of such polarization conversion is proposed in this article. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.