Near-field radiation from a ridge waveguide transducer in the vicinity of a solid immersion lens

A near-field optical system is investigated to improve the transmission efficiency of near-field transducers. A ridge waveguide is placed adjacent to a solid immersion lens (SIL) but separated by a low-index dielectric layer. The incident electric field near the focus of the SIL is determined by the Richards-Wolf vector field equations. The finite element method is used to solve Maxwell's equations. A spot size of 31 nm is obtained. The maximum value of the absorbed optical power density in the recording medium is 7.51 x 10(-4) mW/nm3 for a 100 mW input power.