Kazuyuki Ogura

Design and Evaluation of a Solid Immersion Mirror Using a Dielectric Layer Stack for Near-Field Optical Recording

A new solid immersion mirror (SIM) with high optical efficiency utilizing angular dependence of a dielectric layer stack for near-field optical recording is proposed. The new SIM with a dielectric layer stack was designed, fabricated, and evaluated. The SIM had both convex and aspherical surfaces with a dielectric multilayer stack on one surface and an aluminum reflection coating on the other. The front and rear surface error rms values of the fabricated SIM were 43 mλ (λ=405 nm) and 90 mλ, respectively. The rms error of the wavefront aberration of the SIM was 150 mλ.

Near-Field Optical Readout Using a Plano-Convex Solid Immersion Mirror with a Small Aperture

We have developed a plano-convex solid immersion mirror (PC-SIM) containing a small aperture. Using the developed SIM, a readout experiment using a rotating disk was successfully carried out where the gap between the SIM and the disk was controlled by capacitance sensing. Further investigations by changing the slit width of the sample, aperture diameter of the SIM, and the gap distance between them yielded very interesting results. Under some conditions, a peak appeared at the center of the slit in addition to at both edges. We frame our hypothesis to account for this phenomenon.