The spreading of magnetic reconnection X‐line in particle‐in‐cell simulations–mechanism and the effect of drift‐kink instability
We study magnetic reconnection X-line spreading in a Harris current sheet using three-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. We found that without drift-kink instability, the X-line spreads in ambient ion-drifting speed in the ion-drifting direction while the X-line barely spreads in the electron-drifting direction. With drift-kink instability, the X-line stops spreading after the instability grows to large amplitudes. The interaction between X-line spreading and drift-kink instability could be important in the context of Earth’s magnetotail.