Recording characteristics of submicron discrete magnetic tracks

Discrete magnetic tracks with widths as narrow as 0.5 μm have been formed by etching the surface of Co-alloy film disks. Transitions can be written and read back from widely spaced discrete tracks using conventional heads. A linear variation of pulse area with track width is observed for isolated pulses. Noise measurements for tracks that are either dc erased or written with transition densities up to 3000 flux reversals/mm show a linear variation of media noise with (track width)^1/2, in agreement with the behavior expected for media noise uncorrelated across the width of the track.