• Y.A. Kot
  DESY, Hamburg

The overall bunch compression in FLASH is limited on the one hand by the rf tolerances and on the other hand by linearization of the particle distribution in the longitudinal phase space. While the last one has been significantly improved after the installation of the third harmonic system during the upgrade 2009-2010, the constraint given by rf tolerances cannot be mitigated significantly. To avoid this limitation one has to operate with shorter bunches already at the injector. Since the bunch length is dominated there by the longitudinal space charge one has to go to lower bunch charges. Working points for the operation of the FLASH injector with 20-500pC bunches have been found by means of the optimization procedure based on ASTRA code. The expected bunch parameters are reported in this paper and compared with the experimental results. Further the discussion on advantages and drawbacks of the injector operation in low charge regime is given.