Method for manufacturing magnetic recording medium, and magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus

A method for manufacturing a magnetic recording medium comprising at least a non-magnetic substrate, a soft magnetic underlayer, an orientation control layer that controls an orientation of an immediate upper layer, and a perpendicular magnetic layer in which a magnetization easy axis is mainly perpendicularly oriented with respect to the non-magnetic substrate so as to be laminated one another on the non-magnetic substrate, characterized in that:

• the perpendicular magnetic layer includes two or more magnetic layers, and each layer is subjected to a crystal growth such that each crystal grain composing each magnetic layer forms a columnar crystal continuous in a thickness direction together with the crystal grains composing the orientation control layer, wherein
• the orientation control layer, formed of a Co—Cr alloy, is formed by reactive sputtering using a mixture of a sputtering gas and nitrogen, thereby causing the nitrogen to be doped in the crystal grains of the Co—Cr alloy within a range from 3 atomic % to 15 atomic %, and
• wherein, in a corrugated surface in which a top part of each columnar crystal composing the orientation control layer is formed into a convex, a height from the topmost part of each columnar crystal to a boundary with the next columnar crystal is set to a value of an outer diameter or less of the columnar crystal.