Magnetic force microscopy study of edge overwrite characteristics in thin film media

In this paper, track edge overwrite characteristics in planar isotropic longitudinal thin film media were studied by direct magnetic force microscopy imaging of the edge overwrite patterns. It is found that edge erasure strongly depends on the phase difference between the transitions in the overwriting and overwritten tracks at track edges. If the transitions in the adjacent tracks are in-phase, there exists no edge erase band and transitions in the adjacent tracks area connected in the side written band. Edge erasure occurs when there exist sufficient large phase differences between the transitions in the adjacent tracks. This new understanding of phase dependence of edge overwrite could have strong impact to the system design in terms of consideration for both PES and recording off-track performance