Patent ID: 8125858

Claim:
A heat-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 including a plasmon exciting part, and has a near-field light generating part located in the medium facing surface, the plasmon exciting part facing the evanescent light generating surface with a predetermined distance therebetween; a surface plasmon is excited on the plasmon exciting part through coupling with the evanescent light generated from the evanescent light generating surface; the near-field light generating part generates near-field light based on the surface plasmon excited on the plasmon exciting part; the outer surface of the plasmon generator further includes first and second inclined surfaces that are each connected to the plasmon exciting part, the first and second inclined surfaces increasing in distance from each other with increasing distance from the plasmon exciting part; the plasmon generator includes a shape changing portion where an angle of inclination of each of the first and second inclined surfaces with respect to the evanescent light generating surface increases continuously with decreasing distance to the medium facing surface.