Optical and thermal analysis of the light-heat conversion process employing an antenna-based hybrid plasmonic waveguide for HAMR

• Main Authors: Abadía, Nicolás, Bello, Frank, Zhong, Chuan, Flanigan, Patrick, McCloskey, David M, Wolf, Christopher, Krichevsky, Alexander, Wolf, Daniel, Zong, Fenghua, Samani, Alireza, Plant, David V, Donegan, John F
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 15-07-2022
• Subjects: Physics - Applied Physics; Physics - Computational Physics; Physics - Optics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2205.04770

Opt. Express 26, 1752-1765 (2018) We investigate a tapered, hybrid plasmonic waveguide which has previously
been proposed as an optically efficient near-field transducer (NFT), or
component thereof, in several devices which aim to exploit nanofocused light.
We numerically analyze how light is transported through the waveguide and
ultimately focused via effective-mode coupling and taper optimization. Crucial
dimensional parameters in this optimization process are identified that are not
only necessary to achieve maximum optical throughput, but also optimum thermal
performance with specific application towards heat-assisted magnetic recording
(HAMR). It is shown that existing devices constructed on similar waveguides may
benefit from a heat spreader to avoid deformation of the plasmonic element
which we achieve with no cost to the optical efficiency. For HAMR, our design
is able to surpass many industry requirements in regard to both optical and
thermal efficiency using pertinent figure of merits like 8.5% optical
efficiency.