Magnetic recording medium containing heavy rare gas atoms, and a

Abstract

A magnetic recording medium having a high coercivity and a high S/N ratio for high-density operation can include either a conductive or a nonconductive substrate. If the substrate is nonconductive, a conducting precoat layer is formed over the substrate. Further, an underlayer may be provided, over which a magnetic layer is formed by a bias sputtering method. The bias sputtering method may use Kr, Xe or Rn as a sputter gas, and employs a negative bias voltage. The magnetic recording medium has a product of remanent magnetization and magnetic layer thickness of 10-150 G.multidot..mu.m and a coercivity of 1600-4000 Oe. In combination with this magnetic recording medium, a large-capacity magnetic recording system has a write head that uses a magnetic material having a saturation magnetic flux density of more than 1.2 T in at least a part of the magnetic core; a read head utilizing the giant magnetoresistance effect; a signal processing circuit that utilizes maximum likelihood decoding; and circuits that correct for asymmetry of the reproduced signals from the magnetoresistive head. In addition, the flying height of the magnetic head slider is set to less than 0.05 .mu.m.