The light sampling functions calculate light sampling PDF for the case that the light has been randomly selected out of all lights.
However, since BPT handles lamps and meshlights separately, this isn't the case. So, to avoid a wrong result, the code just included the 0.5 factor in the throughput.
In theory, however, the correction should be made to the sampling probability, which needs to be doubled. Now, for the regular calculation, that's no real difference since the throughput is divided by the pdf.
However, it does matter for the MIS calculation - it's unbiased both ways, but including the factor in the PDF instead of the throughput should give slightly better results.
Reviewers: sergey, brecht, dingto, juicyfruit
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D2258
07de832e22