Moment preserving constrained resampling with applications to particle-in-cell methods

•A Moment Preserving Constrained Resampling (MPCR) algorithm is developed for particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of plasmas.•MPCR algorithm is designed to conserve any number of particle and grid moments with a high degree of accuracy.•Applying MPCR to PIC simulations increases the accuracy, reduces the compute cost, and prevents the numerical instabilities.•The effectiveness of MPCR is demonstrated with several numerical tests, including gyrokinetic fusion plasma simulations.