Static and dynamic flying characteristics of a slider on bit-patterned media (dynamic responses based on frequency domain analysis)

Recording media with grooves, such as discrete track media (DTM) and bit-patterned media (BPM), are considered to be promising media for achieving ultrahigh recording densities. It is thus important to analyze the static and dynamic characteristics of flying head sliders on DTM and BPM using the molecular gas film lubrication equation and the van der Waals (vdW) equation. In this study, we consider BPM with rectangular bits. We express the disk recess as a Fourier series and determine the quasi-static and time-dependent components. We also develop a perturbation method for small groove depths for calculating static slider attitudes and dynamic responses in the frequency domain. The numerical results predict that the grooves will significantly reduce the quasi-static flying height h ₀. They also predict that for a small groove depth h _groove, flying height decrease Δh ₀ almost agree with the value of uniform disk recess obtained by a Fourier series expansion, which also agrees with empirical results. Dynamic slider characteristics obtained by the frequency domain analysis is useful for sliders suffering from excitations of several tens of kHz such as sliders flying at transition between data zone and servo zone, although the dynamic spacing fluctuation by realistic BPM media is negligible.