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In flare-relevant current sheets, tearing instability may trigger explosivereconnection and plasmoid formation. We explore how the thermal and tearingmodes reinforce each other in the fragmentation of a current sheet in the solarcorona through an explosive reconnection process, characterized by theformation of plasmoids which interact and trap condensing plasma. We use aresistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation of a 2D current layer,incorporating the non-adiabatic effects of optically thin radiative energy lossand background heating using \texttt{MPI-AMRVAC}. Our parametric surveyexplores different resistivities and plasma-$\beta$ to quantify the instabilitygrowth rate in the linear and nonlinear regimes. We notice that fordimensionless resistivity values within $10^{-4} - 5 \times 10^{-3}$, we getexplosive behavior where thermal instability and tearing behavior reinforceeach other. This is clearly below the usual critical Lundquist number range ofpure resistive explosive plasmoid formation. The non-linear growth rates followweak power-law dependency with resistivity. The fragmentation of the currentsheet and the formation of the plasmoids in the nonlinear phase of theevolution due to the thermal and tearing instabilities are obtained. Theformation of plasmoids is noticed for the Lundquist number ($S_L$) range $4.6\times 10^3 - 2.34 \times 10^5$. We quantify the temporal variation of theplasmoid numbers and the density filling factor of the plasmoids for differentphysical conditions. We also find that the maximum plasmoid numbers scale as$S_L^{0.223}$. Within the nonlinearly coalescing plasmoid chains, localizedcool condensations gather, realizing density and temperature contrasts similarto coronal rain or prominences.

Thermally enhanced tearing in solar current sheets: explosive reconnection with plasmoid-trapped condensations