Design of a superparaboloidal solid immersion mirror for optomechatronic near-field recording

We designed a superparaboloidal solid immersion mirror (SP-SIM) using a tilted parabolic mirror that applied total internal reflection to an optical flying head for near-field recording. As an SP-SIM does not need an objective lens or folding mirror, the height and weight of the optical flying head can be reduced. Using theoretical ray tracing, we found the optimal parameters for rotational symmetric beam intensity on a high-numerical-aperture (NA) focus. The effective NA of the SP-SIM was 1.32 for both the sagittal and meridional focuses. A 408-nm laser source and high refractive index material, NbFD13, was used for the simulation. The minimum spot sizes at full width 1/e/sup 2/ intensity were 237 and 232 nm in the sagittal and meridional directions, respectively, at normal incidence. The size of the beam spot was kept nearly uniform within a maximum 5% deviation as the field angle changed within /spl plusmn/0.15/spl deg/. The SP-SIM measured 0.83 mm/spl times/0.95 mm/spl times/0.27 mm (W/spl times/L/spl times/H) and weighed ca. 0.6 mg.