Effect of Transition Curvature and Track Edge Fluctuation on Track Edge Noise for Narrow Track Recording

We investigated the effect of track edge noise on transition curvature and track edge fluctuation through experiments and calculations. We measured and calculated two types of recording heads that had similar magnetic write widths, but different transition curvatures. In both the measurements and calculations, track edge noise increased more at high linear density with head with larger transition curvature. This was due to wider erase band, which is considered to be noise source at the track edge. We also clarified that reducing the transition curvature and track edge fluctuation was effective to improve bit error rate, because reducing the transition curvature increases signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), especially at high linear density, and reducing the track edge fluctuation also increases SNR, especially at low linear density. Therefore, reducing both transition curvature and track edge fluctuation is necessary in order to reduce the track edge noise and consequently achieve high areal density.