"weight" in ParticleBinning diag about smilei HOT 2 CLOSED

It depends actually (and it is true that the documentation is lacking some explanation).

In Smilei, each macro-particle has a (statistical) weight that is initialized as its species' number density in the cell where it is born, divided by the initial number of macro-particles in that cell. Thus the weight has the dimension of a density. The ParticleBinning diagnostic collects and sums the weights of macro-particle in some user-defined binning. This means that the data written in the ParticleBinning*.h5 files has the dimension of a density, which is the sum of each macro-particle contribution.

However, as the size of a bin is not the same size as a PIC grid cell, there is some adjustment needed. This is done in happi when using the ParticleBinning python function. This function returns the particle binning data corrected so that the result is really the plasma number density. If your binning axes are not only x, y or z, then happi also divides by the bin size so that the result can be interpreted as a distribution. For instance, a phase-space binning (x, px) will have the dimension of a number density divided by m_e * c.

What is important to recall here is that the raw data in the ParticleBining*.h5 files is not the same as that analysed by happi. There is some correction applied.

from smilei.

@phyax hi!
did @mccoys' answer worked for you?
If so, think about closing the issue ;)

from smilei.