Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording - Ultra-dense Laser and Plasmonic Component Integration to Increase Storage Density on Magnetic Media

In this paper we introduce Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), which is a radical method of increasing storage density on spinning magnetic media in hard disk drives. HAMR requires highly dense integration of a laser, optical waveguide and plasmonic resonator along with other photonic and magnetic components into an area no larger than 0.3 mm² on a rapidly moving recording head. HAMR therefore embodies the most dense heterogenous photonic packaging subsystem ever developed.