How to Plot Particles and Calculate Spherical Harmonics in MATLAB?

[JoAuSc]

I have data for the positions of particles in 3D space and I'm trying to use MATLAB in order to visualize it. How do I plot little balls in 3D? The only function I can find at the minute is streamParticles but I'm looking for something simpler.

EDIT: Nevermind, I figured it out. You simply do plot3(x,y,z,'.'), where x, y, and z are arrays of coordinates.


I do have another question, though. How do you find the spherical harmonics component of a point in MATLAB? In other words, if you have a set of points $$r_i$$, how would you find $$Y_l_m (r_i)$$?

 

[Dr Transport]

You need to expand the points in a series of $$Y_l_m (r_i)$$. It is a fairly straightforward proceedure to do so.

 

[tacman]

To plot particles in 3D space in MATLAB, you can use the plot3() function as mentioned. This will plot small dots at the specified coordinates. If you want to plot spheres instead of dots, you can use the sphere() function and specify the center coordinates and radius for each particle.

As for finding the spherical harmonics component of a point, you can use the spharm() function in MATLAB. This function takes in the coordinates and the desired degree and order of the spherical harmonic and returns the corresponding value. You can also use the sph2cart() function to convert the spherical coordinates into cartesian coordinates, which can then be used with the plot3 function to plot the points.