Patent ID: 8077559

Claim:
A thermally-assisted magnetic recording head comprising: a medium facing surface that faces a magnetic recording medium; a magnetic pole that has an end face located in the medium facing surface and produces a write magnetic field for writing data on the magnetic recording medium; a waveguide including a core and a clad, the core propagating light; and a plasmon generator, wherein: the core has an evanescent light generating surface that generates evanescent light based on the light propagated through the core; the plasmon generator has an outer surface, the outer surface including: a plasmon exciting part that faces the evanescent light generating surface with a predetermined distance therebetween; and a front end face located in the medium facing surface; the plasmon generator has: a first sidewall part and a second sidewall part that are each connected to the plasmon exciting part, the first and second sidewall parts increasing in distance from each other with increasing distance from the plasmon exciting part; and at least one extended portion that is connected to an edge of at least one of the first and second sidewall parts, the edge being opposite from the plasmon exciting part; from the edge of the at least one of the first and second sidewall parts opposite from the plasmon exciting part, the at least one extended portion extends parallel to the evanescent light generating surface and away from both the first and second sidewall parts; the magnetic pole has a portion interposed between the first and second sidewall parts; the front end face includes: a first portion and a second portion that lie at respective ends of the first and second sidewall parts and are connected to each other into a V-shape; at least one third portion that lies at an end of the at least one extended portion; and a near-field light generating edge that lies at an end of the plasmon exciting part; the end face of the magnetic pole has a portion interposed between the first and second portions of the front end face; a surface plasmon is excited on the plasmon exciting part through coupling with the evanescent light generated from the evanescent light generating surface; and the near-field light generating edge generates near-field light based on the surface plasmon excited on the plasmon exciting part.