Current disruption and its spreading in collision-less magnetic reconnection*

Recent magnetic reconnection experiments (MRX) [Dorfman et al., Geophys. Res. Lett. 40, 233 (2012)] have disclosed current disruption in the absence of guide field. During current disruption in MRX, current density and total out-of-reconnection-plane current drop simultaneous with a rise in out-of-reconnection-plane electric field. Here we show that current disruption is an intrinsic property of dynamic formation of X-point configuration of magnetic field in magnetic reconnection, independent of the model used for plasma description and of dimensionality (2-D or 3-D) of reconnection. An analytic expression for the current drop is derived from Ampere's equation and its predictions are verified by 2-D and 3-D electron-magnetohydrodynamic (EMHD) simulations. Three dimensional EMHD simulations show that the current disruption due to localized reconnection spreads along the direction of electron flow with a speed which depends on the wave number of the perturbation. The implications of these results for MRX and other reconnection experiments will be presented.