Universality classes of spatiotemporal intermittency

We discuss the spatiotemporal intermittency (STI) seen in the coupled sine circle map lattice. The phase diagram of this system, when updated with random initial conditions, shows very rich behaviour including synchronised solutions, and STI of various kinds. These behaviours are organised around the bifurcation boundary of the synchronised solutions, as well as an infection line which separates the lower part of the phase diagram into a spreading and a non-spreading regime. The STI seen at the bifurcation boundary in the spreading regime belongs convincingly to the directed percolation (DP) universality class. In the non-spreading regime, spatial intermittency (SI) with temporally regular bursts is seen at the bifurcation boundary. The laminar length distribution scales as a power-law with an exponent which is quite distinct from DP behaviour. Therefore, both DP and non-DP universality classes are seen in this system. When the coupled map lattice is mapped to a cellular automaton via coarse graining, a transition from a probabilistic cellular automaton to a deterministic cellular automaton at the infection line signals the transition from spreading to non-spreading behaviour. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.