Patent ID: 8223596

Claim:
A thermally-assisted magnetic recording head comprising: a surface-emitting type light source for emitting substantially collimated beam; a first diffraction optical element with a convex lens function for focusing the substantially collimated beam emitted from said surface-emitting type light source; a second diffraction optical element with a concave lens function for collimating the light beam focused by said first diffraction optical element; a waveguide integrally formed with said second diffraction optical element and made of the same material as that of second diffraction optical element, the light beam collimated by said second diffraction optical element being incident to said waveguide; an optical-path direction conversion element for converting a direction of an optical path of the incident light beam to a propagation direction of said waveguide, said propagation direction being toward an opposed-to-medium surface; and a magnetic pole for generating write field from its end face on the opposed-to-medium surface side.