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In this work, we investigate the influence of the anisotropic heating on thespontaneous instability and evolution of thin Harris-type collisionless currentsheets, embedded in antiparallel magnetic fields. In particular, we explore theinfluence of the macroparticle shape-function using a 2D version of the PICcode ACRONYM. We also investigate the role of the numerical collisionality dueto the finite number of macroparticles in PIC codes. It is shown that it isappropriate to choose higher order shape functions of the macroparticlescompared to a larger number of macroparticles per cell. This allows to estimatebetter the anisotropic electron heating due to the collisions of macroparticlesin a PIC code. Temperature anisotropies can stabilize the tearing modeinstability and trigger additional current sheet instabilities. We found a goodagreement between the analytically derived threshold for the stabilization ofthe anisotropic tearing mode and other instabilities, either spontaneouslydeveloping or initially triggered ones. Numerical effects causing anisotropicheating at electron time scales, become especially important for higher massratios (above $m_i/m_e = 180$). If numerical effects are carefully taken intoaccount, one can recover the theoretical estimated linear growth rates of thetearing instability of thin isotropic collisionless current sheets, also forhigher mass ratios.

Instabilities of collisionless current sheets revisited: the role of anisotropic heating