Kinetic simulations of the coupling between current instabilities and reconnection in thin current sheets

We investigate the coupling between current and tearing instability modes o f a thin current sheet using the particle code GISMO. We identify pure tear ing modes(k(x) not equal 0), instabilities in the current now direction (k( y) not equal 0) and general 3D reconnection modes (k(x) not equal 0 and k(y ) not equal 0). Our results give evidence that the coupling between tearing modes and current instabilities plays an important role for spontaneous ma gnetic reconnection. These modes give a substantial contribution to magneti c reconnection, additional to the well known 2D tearing mode. When allowing reconnection to occur in three spatial dimensions, a configuration, which was initially invariant in the current flow direction, develops into a conf iguration with no invariant direction.