Numerical simulation of electromagnetic propagation in high-data- density near-field optical recording

The optical characters and light wave propagation of various fiber probes, solid immersion lens (SIL) system and Super-RENS for near-field optical recording are numerically simulated using 3D finite-difference time-domain (3D-FDTD) method in this paper. The aperture metal-coated probe have a near field spot size smaller than the bare-glass fiber probe, which means higher data density in near-field optical recording. The entirely metal coat probe is pointed out to have an extremely small near-field spot size about 10 nm, but the output electromagnetic wave propagation decrease to nearly zero within a few nanometers. The propagating and evanescent wave in different solid immersion lens (SIL) system is numerically simulated. The spot sizes are different because of different polarization. With the TbFe substrate, spot size will remain constant as observation distance z increased. But the propagating, evanescent and total energy decay more rapidly than the SIL system without TbFe substrate.