Directed percolation criticality due to stochastic switching between attractive and repulsive coupling in coupled circle maps.

We study a lattice model where the coupling stochastically switches between repulsive (subtractive) and attractive (additive) at each site with probability p at every time instant. We observe that such a kind of coupling stabilizes the local fixed point of a circle map, with the resultant globally stable attractor providing a unique absorbing state. Interestingly, a continuous phase transition is observed from the absorbing state to spatiotemporal chaos via spatiotemporal intermittency for a range of values of p . It is interesting to note that the transition falls in class of directed percolation. Static and spreading exponents along with relevant scaling laws are found to be obeyed confirming the directed percolation universality class in spatiotemporal intermittency regime.