Patent ID: 7920359

Claim:
A magnetic recording apparatus comprising: a perpendicular magnetic recording medium having a soft magnetic underlayer and a magnetic recording layer disposed on a substrate; and a magnetic head including: a main magnetic pole piece; a trailing shield disposed on a trailing side of the main magnetic pole piece; side shields disposed on a trailing side of the main magnetic pole piece; an auxiliary magnetic pole piece; and a coil generating a magnetic flux in the main magnetic pole piece; wherein Lmag<T-Gap and HUS<S-Gap are satisfied where the magnetic shortest air gap between the main magnetic pole piece and the trailing shield is defined as T-Gap; the magnetic shortest air gap between the main magnetic pole piece and the side shield is defined as S-Gap; a distance between a surface of the main magnetic pole piece and a lower surface of the magnetic recording layer during a write operation is defined as Lmag; and a distance between the surface of the main magnetic pole piece and an upper surface of the soft magnetic underlayer during the write operation is defined as HUS.