Beam combiner for VCSEL array in HAMR head

• Main Authors: Stipe, Barry C, Shi, Norman N, Matsumoto, Takuya
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 23.05.2023
• Subjects: INFORMATION STORAGE; INFORMATION STORAGE BASED ON RELATIVE MOVEMENT BETWEEN RECORDCARRIER AND TRANSDUCER; PHYSICS

The present disclosure generally relates to a magnetic recording head for a magnetic media drive. The magnetic recording head comprises a near field transducer (NFT), a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) device, and a waveguide structure coupled between the NFT and the VCSEL device. The waveguide structure comprises a plurality of waveguide channels and a multimodal interference (MMI) combiner coupled to the waveguide channels. One or more of a curvature, a path length, and a propagation length of each of the waveguide channels is optimized such that each waveguide channel is controllable, or otherwise phase coherent with adjacent waveguide channels. The VCSEL device is capable of emitting a plurality of lasers through the plurality of waveguide channels, and the plurality of lasers are phase coherent when input into the MMI combiner. The MMI combiner combines a power of the plurality of lasers, which is output to the NFT.