Di Mitri, S. Cornacchia, M. JACoW Geneva, Switzerland 978-3-95450-180-9 10.18429/JACoW-NAPAC2016-THPOA06 English 1108-1111 THPOA06 ion optics emittance dipole sextupole Contribution to a conference proceedings 2017 2017-01 http://dx.doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-NAPAC2016-THPOA06 https://jacow.org/napac2016/papers/thpoa06.pdf The advent of short electron bunches in high brightness linear accelerators has raised the awareness of the accelerator community to the degradation of the beam transverse emittance by coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) emitted in magnetic bunch length compressors, transfer lines and turnaround arcs. We reformulate the concept of CSR-driven beam optics balance, and apply it to the general case of varying bunch length in an achromatic cell*. The dependence of the CSR-perturbed emittance to beam optics, mean energy, and bunch charge is shown. The analytical findings are compared with particle tracking results**. Practical considerations on CSR-induced energy loss and nonlinear particle dynamics are included. As a result, we identify the range of parameters that allows feasibility of an arc compressor in a recirculating accelerator driving, for example, a free electron laser or a linear collider.