  Many front-end applications of electron linear accelerators rely on the
production of temporally-compressed bunches. The shortening of electron bunches
is often realized with magnetic bunch compressors located in high-energy
sections of accelerators. Magnetic compression is subject to collective effects
including space charge and self interaction via coherent synchrotron radiation.
In this paper we explore the application of magnetic compression to low-energy
($\sim 40$ MeV), high-charge (nC) electron bunches with low normalized
transverse emittances ($< 5$ $\mu$m).
