2010-089 - Coupled Plasmonic Waveguide Transducer for Near Field Optical Source
Other Information
The envisioned purpose of this invention is to help direct optical energy into a spot that is much smaller than the free space wavelength of light at optical frequencies. This highly focused optical energy is to be used to heat the magnetic surface layer of a hard disk drive. This thermal spot provides assistance to the magnetic writing process, in the mode of, so called, heat assisted magnetic recording, or HAMR. Specifically, this invention presents a new way to couple energy travelling in a dielectric waveguide (with dimensions comparable to the wavelength of light) into a near field transducer that concentrates the light to a much smaller dimension.