The effect of pole tip saturation on the performance of a recording head

The onset of pole tip saturation effects was studied by varying the temperature of a low Curie point ferrite head writing on a γ-Fe2O3recording surface at densities ranging from 200 to 8000 fc/cm. It was found that performance degradation occurred when the head saturation magnetization (gauss) was reduced to approximately 10 times the tape coercivity (oersteds) with the greatest losses occurring at intermediate densities around 4000 fc/cm. The short wavelength behavior is well-explained by recent experiments which suggest an approximately gap independent short wavelength recording depth.