Monte carlo simulation of particulate noise in magnetic recording

The noise power spectrum of bulk erased tape has been measured over a range of wavelengths from 4 mm to 1.6 μm. The spectral shape is common to most particulate recording media and differs widely from theoretical estimates which consider only uncorrelated contributions to the noise power. At 1.2 μm wavelength the measurement is over 25 dB below this theory. An erasure model is presented from which interparticle interaction correlations may be computed. The effect of these correlations reduces the theoretical noise power in agreement with measurement. Unfortunately computational time limitations prohibit the determination of long-range correlations for detailed spectral comparison.