Possibility to form nanometer-sized optical probe in an atomic force cantilevered SNOM

Observation of Magnetic Nanodot Arrays Using Near-Field Polarization Microscope

“…(1) SNPM diagram We have prototyped SNPM, which is characterized by a near-field polarization detection method [1] using illumination of circular polarized light and detection [4] of the polarization of reflected near-field light after changing it to linear polarization light. Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of our SNPM, which is composed of illumination type near-field optical system, atomic force control for constant gap between the sample and the probe, through the lens type optical lever, near-field light probe using plasmon excitation, the detection of the near-field light separate from the mixed lights by and depolarizing far-field light to remove with Glan-Thompson (G-T) analyzer changing to linear polarized lights, XYZ scanner and so on.…”

“…Nowadays, it is believed that the perpendicular magnetic recording has a density limitation of around 800 Gb/in 2 due to the thermal instability. To overcome this problem, bit pattern media (BPM), in which the information is stored in the isolated magnetic dots, was proposed to achieve a magnetic recording with a density of above 1 Tb/in 2 [1][2]. Correspondingly, these magnetic dots can be as small as several ten nanometers.…”