Effects of Limited Resolution on SpectroPolarimetric data, from the Subtle to the Supreme

The effects of limited resolution in two domains, spatial and temporal, is briefly demonstrated through the use of synthetic data and manipulation of emergent Stokes polarization spectra. The importance of modeling the effects on incoming light is demonstrated, for averaging in the temporal or spatial dimensions is an intensity-weighted function. It is showed that when compared to direct binning of pure polarization states or of later products such as derived magnetic field maps, the evaluation of resolution effects based on these simpler methods can be misleading. The general result is presented that limited-resolution polarization spectra may generally have smaller amplitudes than their constituent spectra, and sometimes drastically so; this may have implications for signal/noise-driven integration-time estimates.