A decrease in the L-H transition power threshold
P
L-H
under the lithium wall conditioning has been observed since 2010 in EAST. The physical mechanism responsible for the reduced
P
L-H
is found to be related to three phases of wall recycling as determined by the accumulation of lithium in the vessel. In phase I (a few rounds of wall conditioning) the wall recycling is low, while no clear variation of L-H transition power threshold is observed. In phase II (after another few rounds of wall conditioning) a clear increase in the wall recycling is observed, leading to decreased L-H transition power threshold. In phase III the wall recycling is higher and the hydrogen concentration
n
H
/
(
n
H
+
n
D
)
is lower compared to phases I and II. In this third phase the L-H transition power threshold is mainly reduced by the decreased
n
H
/
(
n
H
+
n
D
)
. During phase III of the wall recycling, the quantitative relationship between the hydrogen content and normalized L-H transition power threshold
P
L-H
/
P
s
c
a
l
e
is studied for campaigns in 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2016. Data scaling reveals that
P
L
−
H
/
P
s
c
a
l
e
=
(
−
1.513
±
0.135
)
×
e
(
−
6.989
±
0.362
)
×
n
H
/
(
n
H
+
n
D
)
+
(
1.698
±
0.050
)
in the hydrogen concentration range of 3–45%, i.e.
P
L-H
/
P
s
c
a
l
e
increases significantly for
3
%
<
n
H
/
(
n
H
+
n
D
)
<
20
%
, while it increases mildly for
20
%
<
n
H
/
(
n
H
+
n
D
)
<
45
%
.