The stabilizing effect of core pressure on the edge pedestal in MAST plasmas

The pedestal pressure measured in Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak plasmas has been shown to increase as the global plasma pressure increases. By deliberately suppressing the transition into the high-confinement regime, the core plasma pressure was systematically altered at the time of the first edge localized mode. Stability analysis shows that the enhanced Shafranov shift at higher core pressure stabilizes the ballooning modes driven by the pedestal pressure gradient, consequently allowing the pedestal to reach higher pressures.