Quantitative MFM study on partial erasure behavior of longitudinal recording

In this paper, we propose a new MFM (magnetic force microscopy) method to analyze the probability and size of partial erasure (PE). An analysis classifying the linear and nonlinear partial erasure is also proposed. It was realized that the nonlinear PE is correlated with the inter-granular magnetic coupling in thin film media. The isolation of the magnetic coupling was found effective to reduce the nonlinear PE.