Near field and magnetic field generator for thermal assisted magnetic recording

We fabricated a generator that produces optical near field and magnetic filed in a nanometer area for achievement of thermally assisted magnetic recording. The generator consists of an embedded wire with a bottleneck structure on a SiO2 substrate. The magnetic field is mainly generated around the bottleneck structure by feeding current through the wire. The near field is produced on an edge of the narrow wire by focusing a laser beam on the bottleneck structure through the backside of the substrate. The generator is anticipated as application to control ordering, chirality, and phase transition of diamagnetic materials in a nano-area. We confirmed the three-dimentional localization of near field in the nanometer size around the bottleneck structure by means of a near field scanning optical microscope. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.