Narrow-gap single-pole heads

This work addresses the recording physics of narrow-gap single-pole heads (SPH) in perpendicular recording. It is found that narrow-gap SPHs have reduced sensitivity with respect to nonzero skew angles. It is shown that while the efficiency of a narrow-gap SPH is generally reduced, even for the case of a gapless SPH, the efficiency differs from the efficiency of a 1-/spl mu/m-thick gap SPH only by a factor of two. The design parameter space for a narrow-gap SPH is investigated.