Analytical Estimation of Transition Jitter for the Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording Process

In the heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) process, the transition jitter is known to depend on the grain size as well as the heat spot thermal gradient. We find that the jitter also depends on the Voronoi grain size distribution, as well as exhibiting a surprising nonlinear dependence on reader width. By combining the noise due to these dependencies we used an analytical formulation to estimate the jitter in the HAMR process. The accuracy of the analytical formulation is verified by comparing the predicted jitter to micromagnetic simulations. This simple formulation provides both physical insight and conserves computational time relative to lengthy (and complex) recording simulations.