Characteristics of the H-mode pedestal in improved confinement scenarios in ASDEX Upgrade, DIII-D, JET and JT-60U

Maggi, C. F.*; Groebner, R. J.*; Oyama, Naoyuki; Sartori, R.*; Horton, L. D.*; Sips, A. C. C.*; Suttrop, W.*; ASDEX Upgrade Team; Leonard, A.*; Luce, T. C.*; Wade, M. R.*; DIII-D Team*; Kamada, Yutaka; Urano, Hajime; JT-60U Team; Andrew, Y.*; Giroud, C.*; Joffrin, E.*; la Luna, E. de.*; EFDA-JET Contributors* for the Pedestal and Edge Physics and the Steady State Operation Topical Grou*

Pedestal and global plasma parameters are compared in ELMy H-modes and improved confinement discharges from ASDEX Upgrade (AUG), DIII-D, JET and JT-60U with varying net input power. The pedestal top pressure increases moderately with power, in broad agreement with the power dependence of the H98(y,2) scaling. For all machines and all scenarios a robust correlation between the total and the pedestal thermal stored energy is observed. In AUG the improved confinement is due to improved pedestal confinement in improved H-modes with early heating and to both improved pedestal and core confinement in improved H-modes with late heating. In DIII-D the increase in confinement is due to improved confinement in the plasma core. JT-60U reversed shear H-modes have strong internal transport barriers and thus improved core performance. In all four tokamaks improved edge stability is correlated with increasing total and H98(y,2) increases with pedestal .