  Despite their discovery about half a century ago, the Gamma-ray burst (GRB)
prompt emission mechanism is still not well understood. Theoretical modeling of
the prompt emission has advanced considerably due to new computational tools
and techniques. One such tool is the PLUTO hydrodynamics code, which is used to
numerically simulate GRB outflows. PLUTO uses Adaptive Mesh Refinement to focus
computational efforts on the portion of the grid that contains the simulated
jet. Another tool is the Monte Carlo Radiation Transfer (MCRaT) code, which
predicts electromagnetic signatures of GRBs by conducting photon scatterings
within a jet using PLUTO. The effects of the underlying resolution of a PLUTO
simulation with respect to MCRaT post-processing radiative transfer results
have not yet been quantified. We analyze an analytic spherical outflow and a
hydrodynamically simulated GRB jet with MCRaT at varying spatial and temporal
resolutions and quantify how decreasing both resolutions affect the resulting
mock observations. We find that changing the spatial resolution changes the
hydrodynamic properties of the jet, which directly affect the MCRaT mock
observable peak energies. We also find that decreasing the temporal resolution
artificially decreases the high energy slope of the mock observed spectrum,
which increases both the spectral peak energy and the luminosity. We show that
the effects are additive when both spatial and temporal resolutions are
modified. Our results allow us to understand how decreased hydrodynamic
temporal and spatial resolutions affect the results of post-processing
radiative transfer calculations, allowing for the optimization of hydrodynamic
simulations for radiative transfer codes.
