MacArthur, J.P. Huang, Z. Lutman, A.A. Marinelli, A. Nuhn, H.-D. WEP004 undulator laser FEL bunching simulation 2015 2015-12 A 3.2 m variable polarization Delta undulator[1] has been installed at the end of the LCLS undulator line. The Delta undulator acts an an afterburner in this configuration, using bunching from upstream planar undulators to produce radiation with arbitrary polarization. To optimize the degree of polarization from this device, a reverse taper[2] has been proposed to suppress background radiation produced in upstream undulators while still microbunching the beam. Here we extend previous work on free electron lasers with a slowly varying undulator parameter[3] to show there is a strong energy spread dependence to the maximum allowable detune from resonance. At LCLS, this energy spread limitation keeps the reverse taper slope in the slowly varying regime and limits the achievable degree of circular polarization.