Prediction of ELM-free Operation in Spherical Tokamaks With High Plasma Squareness (2505.02727v1)

Abstract: We predict that high plasma squareness in spherical tokamaks (STs) could result in edge-localized-mode (ELM)-free H-mode. The effect of squareness on gyrokinetic and peeling-ballooning-mode width-height pedestal scalings is calculated for STs. Because STs can sustain H-mode in first ballooning stability, first-stable pedestals with lower gradients may be further from the peeling-ballooning-mode boundary and therefore naturally free of Type 1 ELMs. We show that while higher squareness destabilizes ballooning modes in first stability, the ELM stability boundary is essentially unchanged. Therefore, higher squareness could result in ELM-free discharges. Random Forest (RF) machine learning models for the gyrokinetic growth rate and distance from first stability are used to predict how squareness affects stability. A RF model with only three easily obtainable geometric inputs predicts proximity to the gyrokinetic width-height scaling on a test dataset with high accuracy, $R^2 = 0.965$.