  Connectivity and reachability on temporal networks, which can describe the
spreading of a disease, decimation of information or the accessibility of a
public transport system over time, have been among the main contemporary areas
of study in complex systems for the last decade. However, while isotropic
percolation theory successfully describes connectivity in static networks, a
similar description has not been yet developed for temporal networks. Here
address this problem and formalize a mapping of the concept of temporal network
reachability to percolation theory. We show that the limited-waiting-time
reachability, a generic notion of constrained connectivity in temporal
networks, displays directed percolation phase transition in connectivity.
Consequently, the critical percolation properties of spreading processes on
temporal networks can be estimated by a set of known exponents characterising
the directed percolation universality class. This result is robust across a
diverse set of temporal network models with different temporal and topological
heterogeneities, while by using our methodology we uncover similar reachability
phase transitions in real temporal networks too. These findings open up an
avenue to apply theory, concepts and methodology from the well-developed
directed percolation literature to temporal networks.
